


Stealing Home

by ReaperWriter



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Curses, F/M, Fate, Pre-Enchanted Forest Backstory, Seers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:28:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very longtime ago, two lovers are separated by a curse for breaking the rules.  A longtime ago, a young pirate named Killian Jones meets a seer who tells him his destiny.  Not so very long ago, Captain Hook meets a golden Swan.  Sometimes, happily ever after takes longer than you think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: A very, very long time ago, in which we set our scene...

**Author's Note:**

> I am always interested in the way this show weaves mythologies, and hit upon the idea of Hook getting a glimpse of his destiny, long before Emma is a twinkle in anyone's eye. The story just took off from there. I'll be updating as this season finishes and we see where our heroes have ended up.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the Enchanted Realms, there was a small village by the sea. Made up mostly fishermen and their families, Caletta seemed nothing special. Yet the road to it was ever cluttered with horses and carriages, dignitaries and warlords. For this village held one treasure, one thing that put it on every map.

As long as magic had existed in the Realms, there had been seers. Usually women, they were either gifted or cursed, depending on who you asked, with a second sight. Some saw the past, some the future, some the present. Some saw all of those things. The most powerful among them in many realms were set up as prophetesses, called Sibyls.

And this sleepy seaside village was the home of one such Prophetess. At the temple on the cliff overlooking the sea, the Sibyl of Caletta was guarded and cossetted. The masters of the temple would determine the worthiness of those coming to ask for a reading, and those they deemed worthy were brought before her. As one Sibyl aged, the temple masters would scour the kingdom for a young woman of significant abilities to take her place when they time came.

Into this village was born a girl, Adelphia. From the time she could talk, the villagers whispered about her gifts. Many feared her, and what she might say to them, and Adelphia was often a lonely child. One day, as she played on the beach bellow temple, not far from where her father had moored his boat, she came across a little boy.

Caius was the son of the captain of the Temple guards, and often avoided the other village children, who asked him probing questions about temple complex, questions his father had forbidden him to answer. He was surprised to see someone on this deserted stretch of beach.

“Hello,” the girl said to him.   She walked past him until she reached a small dug out. He watched surprised, as she knelt, the bottom of her gown getting wet and sandy, and reached into the water, picking up a fish. Then she walked up to the water’s edge and threw it. The fish sparkled silver in the light before slipping into the waves. With a flick of its tail, it was gone. She turned and smiled at him, her violet eyes shining.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, looking at her. Her skin, like so many of the villagers, was lightly bronzed from the sun. And her hair flashed both deep brown and red in the light. She looked at him quizzically.

“That wasn’t a good death,” she said. Suddenly, her eyes seem to shift to a deep blue, like the sea. “Not like when a fisherman catches them. To be trapped in a pool is horrible, waiting for the sun to dry you out. I heard him all the way over there.” She pointed with one skinny arm back the way she had come.

Caius looked at her, a little startled. “Who are you?”

“Adelphia,” she said, holding out her hand. He paused, and watched as her smile faded, her eyes shifting back to violet sadly. Hurrying, he reached out and took it. She looked at him startled, but the smile returned. “But you can call me Del.”

“I’m Caius, but you could call me Cai.” She glanced at their hands, and then back up at him, and seemed hesitant. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, softly. He cocked his head as she looked down. “About your dog.”

Cai felt a brief shock. He had an old hound that his father had since he was born. The old dog had passed away a week before. “You’re a seer.”

Del sighed and let go of his hand. She didn’t say anything, just turned to go.

“Wait! Del!” he said. The girl stopped, and looked at him, one tear on her cheek. “Why are you going?”

“Folk don’t like that I’m a seer,” she said. “I make them nervous. It’s okay, I’m used to it.”

“Del, it’s not bad that you’re a seer.” He stepped forward and took her hand, squeezing it like his mother did his when he was upset. “Really, it’s amazing. You just have to learn what you should and shouldn’t say, is all.”

She smiled at him, still hesitant and shy. “Thank you.”

Cai felt his heart tug. She was near his age, and he knew what it was like to have no friends. “Want to look for shells and drift wood together?”

This time, Del’s smile grew wide. “I’d like that!”

****

A few years passed, and the two became inseparable. After Del had finished her chores and Cai his training with his father and his lessons, he would find her down on the beach. Cai had been learning to read, and would bring his books along, first reading stories to Del, then teaching her to read herself. They would explore the beach, and the cliffs, which was how they found the cave, with its freshwater spring. It became their escape.

As they grew up, Cai found his feelings for Del changing. Slowly, she was losing the gangly arms and legs of their childhood, and in their place, her face had grown softer, and her body curved in a way that made him warm and vaguely uncomfortable.

One day, not long before Del had turned fourteen, a trader had passed by the temple. Cai and his mother perused the little stall he set up off the back his cart. As Cai’s mother spoke to the trader about a new cook pot, his eye was caught by a small display of bracelets. One, made of bronze links and light purple beads, reminded him of Del. He had been doing odd jobs around the temple, and after haggling, he managed to buy it.

Del’s mother and father had invited him to dinner the day of her birthday, and they had sat on blankets on the beach, eating grilled fish and fresh fruit and little oat cakes with honey. His own mother had sent some candies from the trader for Del and her siblings. After dinner, he and Del had wandered down the beach for a while, and then stopped, sitting on a large rock. “Happy birthday, Del,” he said as she leaned into his side.

“Thank you, Cai.” He could smell her hair, a clean scent of the oil soap she used, with the salt of the sea mixed it. He reached into the pouch at his belt, pulling out the bracelet. Without a word, he took her hand, putting it on her wrist. She looked at it, and then up at him, and her eyes shone. “It’s beautiful.”

“So are you.” The words slipped out before he could stop them, and he felt himself blush. Surprise lit her face, and for a moment, he was scarred she would pull away. Instead she smiled, and her hand came up, resting on his cheek. He took a deep breath. “I love you, Del.”

“I know,” she said, her voice teasing. Then, more seriously, “I love you too, Cai. Always have.”

He let out the breath he had been holding, and then he whooped with joy, standing and pulling her into a hug, spinning them both around.

“Cai, I’m getting dizzy!” she shrieked and he set her down. She fell against him and his arms held her tight. Almost without thought, his lips drifted down, brushing softly against hers. She met him there, gently returning the kiss, feelings washing over her. His heartbeat, sure and strong. His love for her, like a rock to anchor to. Soon, her lips had parted, and the kiss grew deeper, more grown up, her fingers racking into his hair.

Then, suddenly, Del had stiffened, her hands coming down to grasp his shoulders. Cai looked at her in surprise, and found her eyes had changed, dark and grey black like a sea squall. Then they drifted shut and she made a sound of pain, her knees buckling.

He caught her and carefully moved to cradle her, kneeling on the ground. Her breathing was ragged and she seemed to be unconscious. “Del! Del, come on, please, wake up. Please, love.”

His hand stroked her face, and in a moment, her breathing eased. Her eyes opened, and looked around wildly before settling on his face. Her violet eyes filled with tears. “Cai, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Del, thank the gods,” he said, holding her tight. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“No, Cai,” she said, struggling to set up, hiccupping. “Cai, it’s your father.”

He felt his skin go cold for a moment. “Del,” he breathed.

“I’ll be all right. Go. Hurry, go.” She struggled to sit, her arms wrapped around her knees.

He stood, torn between wanting to be sure she was okay and needing to go to his father. “Del, I love you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But go.”

Cai ran.

A piece of masonry, worn by sea salt winds, had come loose and fallen with no warning. Cai’s father had been dead before he hit the ground. Cai had shown up at first light, grey and drawn, at the door to Del’s home. Her mother had let him in, wrapped him in a blanket before the fire, and woken Del before taking a basket of food and walking up to the temple to sit with Cai’s mother.

They had sat together, her arms around him, her hand running through his dark blonde hair, for hours before he spoke.

“We’ll bury him tomorrow,” he finally say, his voice raw. “At dawn.”

“I’m so sorry, Cai.” She felt the tears fall from his face, warm on her arm. “I’m sorry. If I had seen it sooner…”

“Del, you didn’t do this,” he said. “You can’t force your gift.”

Del held him tight and closed her eyes. She knew what came next, but she wasn’t brave enough to say.

A few days after the funeral, he found her at the rock where they had kissed, near the entrance to the sea cave. Her eyes were green like sea glass, and fixed to the middle distance. “Del,” he said, softly, sitting down next to her. Words stuck in his throat.

“I know.” The words were husky, and cool, and almost emotionless. Cai was leaving. The temple had given his mother an honorarium for his father’s service, gold and silver coin. But the house in the temple complex was for the family of the captain of the guard, and they would have to replace the dead man soon. Cai’s mother had a brother in a city a week’s ride away who was coming for them, would take them away to live with his family. She had seen it all, when she saw his father’s death.

“I can’t lose you too,” he whispered. She put her arms around him and drew him against her. She hummed softly as his tears soaked the wool gown she wore.

“There are riders between here and the city often. Write to me,” she said. “And I will write to you. And then when we are older, come back for me.”

“Do you see that?” he asked. “Us, together again.”

Del shook her head sadly. “Seers can never see their own fates. We would go mad otherwise.”

“I promise you, Del. When I am seventeen, I’ll come back. I’ll join the guard, and I’ll marry you.” He kissed her, softly. “I promise.”

She had stood by the temple gates as his mother had loaded into the wagon with their things, Cai on a horse next to his uncle, and watched them ride north to the city road. She had waved until he was out of sight, the bracelet on her wrist twinkling in the light.

****

Letters had come to the Del from the city for six months. Stories of street food and market fairs, shops and adventures. She had taken them to their place and read them over and over. And she had written back, of the waves and the sea, her family and village.

Then one week, a letter didn’t come. Del sent another, and another, but no word came. Finally, a rider arrived asking for her, with a stack of letters, the last few she had sent. All were marked crudely, “No such person.” She had gone to the cave, past the rock and into the cool interior. She curled up in the sand, and sobbed until she felt hollowed out, like a dried husk. Then she had taken all of his letters, and hers returned, wrapped in oil cloth, and had hidden them in the rock fall near the spring. She had almost taken off the bracelet, but in the end, she couldn’t. It would be a reminder, for the years to come.

When she was 17 and Cai would have been 18, the masters of the temple had come to her home, to test her. She had done readings for hours, until her head ached and her stomach rolled, until blood trickled from her nose. In the end, they had nodded and spoken to her parents, then to her. She had the powers. She would be the next Sibyl, if she consented. The head of the masters, a powerful sorcerer name Agathan, explained that she would be committing herself, to live a solitary life, chaste and alone, that she would be ruled by her gift and the rules of the temple, until her death. A year had passed beyond the time Cai had promised to come for her, and she had no word of him. A year of ice encased her heart. Adelphia gave herself over to the temple to be trained.

She was 19 when the old Sibyl died. She had worn the deep red of the acolyte for two years, and awoke in the night to find two of the temple servants waiting with a gown of pale blue. She closed her eyes and said a prayer to the gods for the woman she was replacing. The Sibyl had been kind to her, teaching her to hone her talents in the quiet times when she wasn’t doing readings for the great and powerful.

She had risen and let them dress her, let them style her hair into the knot that helped mark her as the Sibyl. And in the dim interior of the temple, amid candles and incense, she had knelt and taken the collar of the Sibyl around her neck. When she arose, no one called her by name again for a long time.

The Sibyl had made one request, when she had committed herself. The cave in the cliffs below was sacred to her, and somewhere she could refresh her spirit when reading the great and mighty overwhelmed her and wore her ragged. She had gained permission to go there when she wished, in her spare time, with one guard, who would wait for her at the start of the foot path at the bottom of the cliff.

****

She was 24, and had just dressed after soaking in the cold spring. The gown, an old one, hung loose about her, waiting to be belted, covering the collar at her throat. She had plaited her hair wet into a rope, which she would let the maids style when she returned to her rooms. She turned to the entrance of the cave and nearly screamed as the shadowy shape of a man stood blackened by the streaming sunlight.

Scrambling for her belt, she grabbed the dagger from it and unsheathed it, holding it in front of her. “How dare you!” she said. “No one is allowed here, you must leave. Go, or I will scream for the guard!”

“Since when?” said the man, stooping a little to enter. “I came here freely as a child.”

Her eyes adjusted as he moved out of the bright sunlight. The man was a soldier, his armor brightly studded with bronze, a red commander’s cloak at his shoulder. He held a shined helmet under his arm, and his blond hair looked like rough spun straw. But his eyes struck her as familiar, green as the sea in a storm.

“Caius?” she breathed.

His own eyes had adjusted and he was looking at her like a drowning man at a life line. “Del. Oh, Del!”

He made to move toward her. She stepped back and put the dagger up between them. “No.”

The man froze, staring at her. “Del, what’s wrong?”

The noise that came out of her was like a hysterical laugh, paid and biting. “Do you know I mourned you for almost ten years? That I thought you dead?” She fought to keep the anger and hurt from welling up and overwhelming her. She would not cry for him, not now. “Ten years, Caius. I wept for you and mourned for you. I reached out with my sight and couldn’t find you. Ten years.”

“Del, I’m sorry.” He set the helm down and raised his hands in supplication. “When you stopped writing…”

“WHEN I STOPPED WRITING?!” She moved to the rock fall and yanked out a stone, almost throwing it at him. When she grabbed the oil cloth wrapped bundle, she did throw it, hitting him square in the chest. “You bastard.”

He knelt and picked up the letters, which had come loose of the oil cloth. She saw the anger in his face as he looked at the last few she had written, the crude scrawl across them. “They were supposed to send them on…gods, Del.” He looked up, pain replacing the anger. “We moved. My uncle took new work, and we moved to a city past the first. My uncle’s friend swore he would forward these.”

“I didn’t move, Caius.” Her voice was raw and tired. “I have never left the village. I waited, and prayed you’d come. As you promised.”

“I’m sorry, Del, but I am here now.” He carefully set the letters down, and took a step toward her. She shied from him. “Del, I’ve missed you. Please.”

“Why are you here, Caius?” she asked. She wanted to curl in on herself, around the tight, aching pain in her heart. “Why now?”

“I came to see the Sibyl.” And with those words, her heart turned to lead. She jammed the dagger down into the sand and grabbed the belt, turning from him and belting her tunic tight. She picked the weapon back up and shoved it into its sheath, then turned to him. The ceremonial collar around her neck caught the light.

“You have seen her. Congratulations, best of luck to you.” She made to move past him.

Horror filled his eyes. “Del.” He reached for her.

“Don’t.” Her voice was dead, cold. “It’s forbidden.”

She hurried for the entrance, and then almost ran to where her guard waited. It wasn’t until she was alone in her rooms that she collapsed to the floor and sobbed.

****

She spent the next day doing a long reading for a representative of a distant king, her voice cool and distant, colder even then the previous Sibyl taught her to be. The questions asked were difficult and complex, and what the powers showed her nebulous and had to describe. Agathan pushed her harder than usual, so hard she blacked out, and had to be carried to her rooms.

He came to her later and apologized, told her to take the following day to rest and recuperate. In the morning, she rose early and backed a small basket with a blanket, a towel, a change of robe, and book, then summoned a guard to accompany her down the cliff path. “Do you need help carrying that, lady?” the guard asked.

“No, thank you, Alessander,” she replied. “I am fine.” He nodded and took up his post on the small bench by the path.

She continued on alone, reaching the entrance to the cave and slipping inside. She set the basket down and pulled the blanket out, ready to lay in the dim coolness and read her book. As she bent over to spread it out across the sand, a hand snaked around her and covered her mouth. She froze and wanted to scream, but the hand pressed hard as her attacker’s other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her back against a strong chest. She struggled, trying to break free.

Suddenly, a feeling she had only felt in her dreams for the last ten years returned to her. A strong sure heart beat and a wave of deep love washed over her. She went limp in relief that it wasn’t someone to kidnap her or kill her. Hurriedly, she reached out with the sight, trying to read him. The pain and emptiness of lost contact. Fear and bravery in equal measures. Love for his men, as a commander. But no love of another woman, certainly.

She felt him let her go, and sank to her knees on the blanket, gasping as the sight cleared. Immediately, she felt him drop next to her. “Del, please, I’m sorry, but I needed to see you. I needed you to see me, to know the truth. I thought you had died, Del. That the letters stopped because you died. I would have come for you, Del, I swear it.”

She sighed, because it didn’t matter. She was the Sibyl. Her life was no longer her own. “Cai.” Her voice cracked, and he reached for her. She jerked away. “You can’t touch me, now. If anyone knew, they would execute you.”

“Del,” he said, softly. “There has to be a way.”

“Where have you been, these last ten years?” The question was meant to deflect from the unhappiness of her answer. She moved to sit removed from him, her back to the cave wall.

Caius looked at her, longing and pain on his face. For the first time, she noticed the scars. One on his right cheek, a thin slicing line. Another on his upper left arm, more jagged.

“I thought…well. You were lost to me. And then the army came to the city, looking for volunteers for a war.” He sighed and reached up, running his hands through his hair. “Mother tried to talk me out of it, that she had already lost Father, and she couldn’t lose me too. But I told her I had lost you, and I needed something to fight for, so I went. And it was hard. And horrible. But it gave me some kind of focus. And I was good at it.”

She found herself looking at him, his strength, the clear pride he had in his cloak. What she had felt when she read him. “I can see that.” Something of her old smile ghosted over her lips.

“Why, Del? Why did you let them pen you up like this?” he asked. “You had such fire. Spirit. Now, you just seem…empty.”

“I mourned you, and then I took vows. I am to abjure the touch of men. Purity and chastity promote my gifts.”

He looked at her. “You can’t believe that, Del. Truly.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” she said. “They own me now. I must abide by the rules I agreed to.”

“Do you even know all their rules?” he asked, sounding almost angry.

She looked at him, shocked. “You were the one who came here to see the Sibyl. What changed?”

There was bitterness and weariness in his laugh this time. “They refused my request, Del. I wasn’t found ‘worthy’.” The word was a sneer.

“They have to limit who I can read, Cai. To do it on that level, to reach for the answers to those questions.” She tried to think, to explain. “Do you remember what happened to me, that day?”

He didn’t need to ask which day. It would always be the day between them. He nodded.

“I trained for two years to be able to take that kind of connection. The emotion. The sensations. The pain. And I still have days that cripple me.” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I passed out yesterday, trying to answer their questions. If I tried to read for everyone, all those who asked, it would kill me.”

“Del, beloved, I don’t want that,” he said. “But their method of determining who is worthy is to give your gifts to whoever throws them the most coin.”

She sat up, abruptly, and looked at him. “No.” Whispered, ragged.

“I wouldn’t lie to you Del,” he said. “No matter what it gained me. I came to seek the Sybil because there is another war coming. One we may not be able to win. I need to know if there is any way to save my men, to find victory. For the good of our kingdom, Del. And they told me no. It wasn’t a worthy question. And instead, they took the legate from a far off land.”

“He’s who I read.” She said it hollowly. “When I…when I was overwhelmed.”

“His king is who threatens this land, Adelphia.”

Terror and rage swept through her. Surely not. Agathan had men at the royal court. He would know such things. Sibyls were meant to be impartial, but there are limits.

Caius saw her wavering. “Light of my heart,” he said. Her heart faltered at the line he wrote to her so long ago. He held his hand out, careful not to touch her. “Take my hand, and look for yourself.”

Del knew this was a mutiny, that she was skating the edge of a precipice. Trembling, her small hand reached out, and she saw his eyes, the little boy who accepted her. The young man who loved her. Her fingers twined with his, and she threw herself open.

War, blood, pain. Gold. Gold, gold, piles of gold, so much of it. And blood, dripping from it, running over it like a river over rocks.

He had let go her hand, and was instead stroking her hair. She was laying on her side on the blanket, and a wetness on her upper lip told her that her nose bled. She wiped it on the back of her hand, the red of it vicious against her skin.

“How long was I unconscious?” she asked, softly. He started, not realizing she had awoken, lost his own thoughts.

“Half an hour or so,” he said. “Del, I would never have asked…”

“I needed to know.” She struggled to sit, feeling lightheaded and spent. Her head was pounding, and when her vision suddenly shifted, she slid back down to lie on the blanket.

Everything, all of it was a lie. She hadn’t given herself to serve the greater good. She had given herself to be whored out the highest bidder, and she hadn’t known. Had no inkling that Agathan, that the masters of the temple were using her.

“What can I do for you, Del?” he asked, concerned.

“I need to sleep, for a while.” She looked at him, her eyes damp with unshed tears. “Stay with me, please?”

“The guard?” he asked. She shook her head. “Okay.”

She stretched out on the blankets, and let her eyes close, giving into the exhaustion.

She awoke a while later, warm. The red wool commander’s cloak covered her. Next to her, Cai sat reading the book of poetry from her basket.

She sat up experimentally, but when her world didn’t tilt on its axis again, she remained upright. Her hands played with the edge of the wool.

Cai watched her, quietly. Finally he said, “So what will you do?”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “If they found out I read for you, outside the temple bounds, for something this big, it would mean death. Mine definitely, and most likely yours.”

“Del, I can’t be the cause…” he started, but she shook her head.

“My life is going to be forfeit anyway,” she said, softly. “I can’t go back, knowing what I know now. But I can’t put you at risk without you knowing the cost.”

Cai looked gutted. “Del, please. Run away with me. I’ll get you somewhere safe.”

“They would hunt us down like dogs.” She handed him the cloak and stood. “I need to go back up to the Temple, to keep up appearances. I’ll come to you tonight, and read for you. Then you have to go back to you men, and save the Kingdom. Live your life, Cai.”

“Del, please.” She stopped, and reached out, her fingers tracing the scar on his cheek. “It can’t end that way.”

She just looked at him sadly and grabbed the basket, then left him to wait.

****

In the dark of the night, she had changed into an old gown and a hooded cloak. She took a small horn lantern and lit it, then hid it under the thick wool, pulling it tight around her. She stole from her room, out a window, and snuck to the small back gate that was unguarded most nights. From there, she was able to edge around to the cliff path.

Caius was waiting for her in the moonlight of the cave, sitting on the blanket. He had removed his armor and wore only his tunic, a small dagger out and in his hands, turning it over and over. He looked at her as she slipped into the cave, letting the hood slip from her loose hair. Longing filled his eyes. She turned and set the lantern down.

“Just give me a minute to set this cloak down,” she said, forced cheer in her voice. Her hand shook only a little as she moved to unclasp the garment, her back to him. “Then I’ll do the reading.”

“I can’t be the death of you, Del,” he said, voice raw. “I can’t.”

She froze, the wool falling off and pooling at her feet. Suddenly, his warmth was behind her, and she closed her eyes as his hands came up and rested on her shoulders. When she didn’t move, he turned her to face him and drew her against him.

“Caius,” she said, softly.

“I dreamed of you.” His lips brushed her forehead, her cheek, his nose brushing against her. “Every night, I would lay in camp or the barracks, and I would dream about you. Your laugh. Your smile. How the light would catch your hair. What it felt like to kiss you.”

His lips brushed hers, and she ached for him, the want of him. “Caius, if I…if we…it might diminish my powers, might make the reading…”

“Del…”

“Let me read for you first, please,” she said. “This has to mean something. What I gave my life to has to mean something.”

He sighed, and stepped back. “Okay. What do I do?”

She sat on the blanket and nodded at him to sit in front of her. “I need something relating to your question.”

He reached for the dagger he had been holding, and handed it to her carefully. “This was a gift from my general when they made me a commander. He leads the King’s forces.”

She nodded, and held it lightly, closing her eyes. Centering, she said “Ask you questions.”

“Del,” he said, softly.

“Caius, please.”

He sighed. “Will there be war?”

She breathed in and out, then reached out into the mists in her mind. Caius watched as her head rose, and her eyes opened, gleaming grey. “Men, so many men, leather and iron and bronze. Horses and wagons. Shield and sword and bows. All marching, marching toward a precipice.”

He watched intently, amazed. He had never seen her read someone formally, had never asked her. “Can we win?”

Her eyes shifted before him, taking on an unearthly yellow tone. “There is a wolf who will hunt through the long night. A lone wolf, and large, deadly and fierce. To stop the wolf, you must stop the night. To stop the night, you must illuminate it before all.”

He could see the sweat on her brow, could see her shudder with the effort. He puzzled through her meaning. “This King doesn’t just want our lands, he wants them all. If we expose his plan to all the realms, then he will be stopped?”

She shuddered again, and her eyes shifted to a piercing bright blue. “Light will ever out the darkness, until time ends.”

Caius breathed out. “Enough, Del.”

She dropped the dagger like it was scalding her and then sagged over.   He threw it aside, and then reached for her, pulling her into his arms. He felt the tension leave her body as he stroked her hair.  
“I’m sorry, my love, so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “You should go, before I am missed.”

“Del,” he breathed. Then he crushed his lips to hers. And she was drowning, drowning in his love, his need, his passion. Her arms came up, and the small part of her mind fighting knew she had to push him away, get him to go before it was too late. But then she was clutching him, moving to straddle his lap, as his lips burned down her neck and his hands moved to pull the gown from her body.

Soon, she lay beneath him, her violet eyes staring into his green ones as he held himself over her. “Del,” he said, “I’ve never.”

“Nor I,” she whispered. “Just…slowly.” And then she gasped softly as he entered her, moving slowly, slowly, then a pause as he reached the proof of her maidenhood. She nodded, and whimpered at the quick, sharp pain.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, Del,” he said, his head buried in the crook of her neck as he froze. It passed for her though, and she found herself tilting her hips up to him. He began to move, and soon, like the rock of the sea, they were meeting as tension filled her. She could feel him, but also feel his mind, his soul, everything joined and wonderful and if death took her now, she would have been fine.

Then she was flying and falling, and she could feel him, falling, falling. When they had recovered, she kissed him. “You have to go.”

“Del, I can’t leave you,” he said, holding her tightly. “Not now. Please, come with me. I swear, I will protect you.”

“Oh, do you?” The voice was cold as ice and hard as stone. Agathan. Head of the Temple Masters. She scrambled clear of Caius, pulling her gown on.

“Agathan,” she said, moving to draw his attention away.

“You stupid, foolish quim,” he said, advancing towards her. “What in Hades have you done?”

“I read you, Agathan,” she said, lying. “When you touched me, I saw what you are doing. How you have been manipulating access to my gift for your own profit.”

“How those receiving your visions are chosen is no concern of yours,” he said. “You have given away prophecy outside of the bounds of the temple and defiled your body in defiance of your vows. I have every right to kill you where you stand.”

“Don’t touch her!” Caius shouted, grabbing his sword. Agathan flicked his wrist, and Caius was thrown against the wall and pinned by an invisible force, his voice stripped from him. The sword clattered to the ground.

“Let him go,” she said. “He was my sweetheart from childhood, he didn’t know I was the Sibyl. If you want to punish me, punish me, but leave him be.”

“He has been given prophecy,” Agathan growled. “He can’t be allowed to leave.”

“He knows what will be, not what could be.” Adelphia circled to put herself between Agathan and Cai. “There is no changing what will be.”

“And why should I spare him?” Agathan said. “When his death would cause you pain.”

“Because,” she replied, and she opened herself to the mists. Her eyes shifted to an eerie green. “You have two possible fates, Agathan, son of Dathan. If you kill him tonight, you won’t like the fate that befalls you. Kill me, but spare him.”

Agathan looked at her sharply, then smiled a horrible smile. “Very well, he leaves alive. I won’t even turn him into a toad.”

“Thank you,” she said, humbled. She looked to where Cai stood, struggling to try to free himself.

Agathan laughed a cruel laugh. “Oh, don’t thank me yet. It seems that death is too good for you. You have deprived us of a Sibyl and none stand ready to replace you.”

“I’m impure,” she said. “I can’t remain the Sibyl.”

“No. But death is swift, and merciful. Even if I flayed you while your lover watched, it wouldn’t be punishment.” He smiled at her, and her heart froze. A sudden crack filled the room as the collar of the Sibyl broke and fell from her neck. “I curse you Adelphia, in the name of Cassandra. You shall not age or change. You shall be bound to give your gift of sight as freely as you have this day, to any who seek it of you, until such day as one of them heed your words on what may be, and act in such a way that they are saved from ruin. Only then will you be free to live out your life.”

“You gave your word. Caius lives,” she said.

“He’ll live.” Agathan said. “Now say good bye.”

Adelphia looked across the cave at Caius and opened her mouth. Suddenly, Agathan flicked his wrist, and she disappeared in a flash of light, as Caius’s voice was returned.

“NO!” He sagged to the ground, unable to find the strength to move. “You bastard.”

“Careful boy,” Agathan sneered. “She has bargained your life, but just because you leave alive tonight doesn’t mean I can't kill you tomorrow.”

“I’ll find her,” Caius said, growling. “I’ll find Del, and I will help her break the curse.”

“Oh” Agathan chuckled. “Did I forget to mention that? You won’t. She is trapped from your view for as long as she labors under the curse. You will be dust by the time she breaks it. If she ever does.”

“What if I make you a deal?” Caius said. “What if I keep my mouth shut about what I know, of how you do your business here.”

“For what?” Agathan said.

“You curse me to search for her until she breaks the curse,” Caius said. “If you are so sure she can’t, then we will suffer eternally.”

Agathan gave an evil laugh. “Oh, both of you suffering for all eternity. That I do find amusing. Very well.” A flick of his wrist and something cold and needling hit Caius in the chest. “You will learn quickly, I think, to be careful what you wish for. And then you can think on that for a very long time. Now, get out. If you are here in the morning, I will let the guards use you for a few years of target practice.”

And with that, the sorcerer vanished.


	2. Enter the Pirate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three years after losing his brother, newly piratical Killian Jones makes port in Perduta Speranza, and finds hope in the last place he thought.

 

The Enchanted Realms, lifetimes later.

It had been nearly three years since Liam had died in his arms in the Captain’s cabin on the _Jewel of the Realm_. Three years since he had turned pirate, rechristening her the _Jolly Roger_ and setting out to wreak as much havoc on the King’s navy and goods as possible. Even with time, the rage he had embraced burned as bright in his heart as it had when the light left Liam’s eyes.

They had put into the small, disreputable port of Speranza Perduta, lost hope. A den of thieves and fences, assassins and poisoners and dark magic, it was a convenient place to sell off captured goods and make repairs. His men had been given shore leave while he stayed to watch the work of the shipwright’s crew making patches to damage taken in their last sea battle.

As the evening waned, a few men returned to the ship looking, though not drunk, worse for wear.

“Talbot,” he said to the cook’s mate. “What’s the matter? You look like a demon’s on your tail.”

Talbot pulled a small flask from his belt and took a hard pull from it, releasing a waft of rum, heavily spiced to cover the cheapness, into the air. “We’ve each had a bit of a turn, captain. There’s a seer in the town, renowned for her gift. We all did readings.”

“So?” he asked. “Charlatan seers are a dime a dozen.”

“She’s no charlatan, Captain,” he said. “She knew things. Secret things. It was eerie. I actually refused to let her tell me my death.”

Jones scoffed, and went back to the sextant and star chart he looked at. But curiosity had planted a seed, which germinated and grew as more men came back the next day with the same shell shocked affect.

Finally, on the second evening, taking directions from Talbot, he left the ship in the hands of his first mate and made his way up the cliffs of the winding town until he found the almost hidden alleyway. At the end hung a small painted wooden sign of a mermaid supporting an all seeing eye. Stepping to the door, he reached out to knock.

The heavy wood creaked away from him, opening into a room lit by glowing lamps from the far east, with scarves and shawls draped from the ceiling. A small round table sat on the floor with pillows on either side on the floor.

Killian scoffed. It was the exact same set up he had seen in a dozen towns, with a dozen so called seers.

“Well, my dear Captain Jones, sometimes one must give people what they do expect, in order to give them the unexpected.”

The voice, cool and husky, made him start a little, and turn. His eyes had been so drawn to the table and the room, he didn’t see her step into door way leading back into a black interior. He had been expecting someone older, a crone or a hag. Instead, this woman was young, her skin a soft bronze. Her hair looked black until she moved more into the light, then sparks of deep crimson shone through the curls.

Her eyes, though, looked an unearthly shade of violet, reminding him of the sky at sea just before a squall. He felt unnerved.

“Clever trick,” he said dismissively. “Make the room busy to distract the eye, catch your guest unaware. And is the door enchanted, or is there a trigger?”

“How very droll,” she replied, drifting passed him and settling on the cushions on one side of the table. “A skeptic.’

“So, how does this work?” he asked, folding himself onto the pillows opposite with a carefully orchestrated careless flop. “Do you need me to drink tea, or look at my palm?”

“You put your coin in the bowl, I answer your questions.” She lifted a small tea glass to her lips, one he hadn’t even noticed.

“Do you have a name?” he asked, pulling out a handful of coins and holding them out of her inspection. She raised an eyebrow at him and pointed to a simple penny, the least valuable of the lot. He dropped it into the incised brass bowl at the center of the table.

“Delphine,” she said. “And that one does not count. You get five questions, which I will answer as fully as I can. Ask wisely, and only things you really want to know the answer to.”

Killian snorted. “And why on earth should I believe you?”

Delphine looked at him; then closed her eyes. He considered taking his coin and leaving, but suddenly, a cool breeze passed through the room and Delphine’s posture changed. When she spoke, the cool and husky voice was gone. In its place was something feminine, and sing-song, almost like a soft chant. Her eyes opened and bored into him, the violet replaced by the beryl green of an angry sea.

“You were young, oh so young, barely more than a babe when she left you. Not her fault, not her fault, an accident, and then there were three. And then you were older, but still not more than a boy, and he promised you, promised adventure together, didn’t he?”

He felt himself gape at her, his hand dropping to the top of his sword.

“But then he ran, and left you, just a boy, almost alone, and now there were two. And you were happy, you two, and proud, and brave, and sure. And then you were tricked, and then you were one, just one, and burned up and blackened and raw. Just one.” She stopped, and her eyes closed again and she sagged slightly. In her voice from before, she said. “That was one, you have four more.”

“Gods.” He said. His hand moved to his hip, but suddenly, a glass was in front of him, smelling like rum. He picked it up and drained it, then considered his next question.

“Will it ever stop, the pain?”

Again, a breeze moved through the room, different this time, warm like a tropical shore. Delphine’s posture changed again, straightening, her head cocking to one side. This time, her eyes were blue green. “Never gone, not all the way, but it changes, does pain. Like sea glass, washed by the waves until smooth, until memory remains, but the sharp edges gone. Malleable like glass, and salt water the cure, whether the sweat, tears, or the sea, so it shall be. Memento mori.” She sagged again, and he could see a fine sheen of sweat on her brow. Her natural voice returned. “That was two, you have three more.”

“We can take a minute, if you need it,” he said. She looked up at him, violet eyes surprised. “It looks like it wears on you.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but she smiled at him, a small smile, and tight in the way one that gets to do so rarely might smile. But she did take her cup and sip some more tea. “Please, ask again.”

He pondered for a long moment. “What am I searching for?”

Delphine nodded and closed her eyes. The breeze this time was cold, like a winter wind before an icy gale, and when Delphine shifted and looked at him, her eyes were ice blue. “You search for your home.”

“I have the _Jolly Roger_ ,” he countered. She shook, like one caught in a chill.

“Though you love her like a mistress, she is not your home; she is only your shelter from the storm. You burn, burn, burn with your anger, your need for revenge, but underneath, you weep for a lost home, for one who made it so.” She paused and took a raged breathe. “We war with ourselves, when we lose our solid ground, and you war deeply between the light and the dark, the low and the high. But the foundation is true.”

This time, when she stopped, she made a small sound, almost like pain, then shook her head, and brought her violet eyes back to his. “Two questions remain.”

He reached out and pushed the rum glass, somehow full again towards her. She took it and drank deep, then set it down. He felt shaken by what she said, deeply. Perhaps his men had been right. He had never seen anything like this. “Will I find it, then? This home?”

Delphine dropped her head, and this time, the breeze smelled of sea water and pines. When her head rose again, her eyes were a silver grey. “Many leagues you will sail, and many battles to fight. You will find harbors, and then they will crumble, like a ship wrecked on the rocks. You will know loss and rage and pain. Don’t let it consume you, or you will miss what you seek. You will not know it immediately, but it shall be revealed to you in a fall of bright gold. The strength of this home shall redeem you.”

This time, Delphine sagged and swayed, and Killian found himself moving to catch her. “Careful,” he said, bringing the rum to her lips. She drank and then sighed, sitting back upright. “We can stop, if need be.”

“No, not once the reading has started.” She sat up and took a deep breath, then gestured for him to return to his seat. She reached for her tea, and took a long sip. “Ask your last question, Captain.”

He knew what she expected him to ask, what he imagined most asked. But he truly didn’t want to know what death would look like or when it would come. His question was much harder. “Why do I deserve that? Redemption? I’m a pirate.”

This time, there was no breeze, but somewhere near the ceiling, something glass tinkled like a chime. Delphine’s eyes had turned again, this time to a yellow brown like gold. “If you walk into a hall and find a fresco there, does it cease to be if you cover it in whitewash? Is a diamond not still a diamond when it’s still in the stone. Rust of disuse may cover the heart of a good man, may stain it, but there is honor in it yet. And kindness. Bravery and faith. Looks can deceive, Killian Jones. But truth will ever out.”

He shook himself, and found Delphine standing, offering him her hand. He took it and rose to his feet. “I…you weren’t what I was expecting,” he said, and reached for his pocket to give her more coin. She reached for him and stayed his hand, shaking her head. “And that was all…it’s my…”.

“Past, present, and future as they are now.” She gave him another tight smile. “Paths can change, for those who do not heed the course in following their stars.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll take my leave.”

He had made it to the door, when her voice, cool and husky, if a little tired, said, “Captain, a gift.”

He turned to her and she held something out to him. Taking it, he opened his hand to find a small, bright brass swan. “I don’t understand,” he said.

She seemed to fade through the door into the darkened back room. “You will. Fair weather and smooth seas, Captain.”

He left and returned to his ship. Pausing at the desk in his brother’s old cabin, he considered the bauble, then tucked it into a drawer and forgot it.

As time flew by, he found himself in a tavern, with a dark haired beauty, and when she had run away with him, he thought briefly back to the seer, and scoffed a little. Clearly, this was what he had sought, the love of this woman. No fall of gold there. And for years, he was happy, though never quite content, still seeking his revenge on the King, his pirate queen by his side.

Then Milah was dead and gone, and his hand along with her, and he felt consumed by the rage and the fire of the years, and he set out to try and find a way to kill the crocodile. He had become Hook. Off to Neverland, where he sailed for decades, growing no older, but also no wiser. Where he finally met Bae, only to have the boy reject him, reject the hope he had of maybe fulfilling part of Milah’s last wishes. Instead, he focused on returning to the Enchanted Forest and finding revenge. And so he had walked into the employ of two Queens, twisted by evil, and found himself again trapped in a curse where he had long years to simmer in his fury and need for revenge.

When he first met Emma Swan, he thought nothing of it. He flirted; in the way he did when he felt like that would get him what he wanted. And as the adventure went on, getting to know her, he felt something stir. But then she had betrayed him, and he’d hated her a little, for leaving him trapped in the lair of the giant. Arriving in Storybrooke, his focus remained on his revenge. However, before leaving the ship, he had opened the drawer in the desk in his quarters and had reached in, searching for a small knife that had been Liam’s. Instead, his hands came around a small brass figure, patinaed with age.

He looked at the small bird, and felt something shift ever so slightly. But there were plans to execute and crocodiles to kill. He shoved the figure back in the drawer and slammed it shut.

Through his time and the plots of first Cora, the Regina, then Greg and Tamara, Hook fought to stay his course of revenge, right up until it looked like he really would have to die for it. Then he learned who Neal really was…had been, and that Henry was his son as well as Emma’s and Regina’s. He remembered, for a moment, the boy on his ship, who he taught to follow the stars. And in the back of his mind, a voice reminding him to follow his.

So he put aside his hatred, as well as he could, and had turned around, going back, only to learn the boy had been taken. Looking at the fear and the grief on Emma’s face, something shifted a little more for him, and the next thing he knew, he was letting all of them, even that hated Crocodile Rumplestiltskin, onto his boat and charting a course for Neverland.

As the days passed and he spent more and more time with her, he found himself drawn to the Savior. After their talk, when he had given her Bae’s sword, he had retreated to his cabin and had pulled open a drawer to look for something, and again his hands fell upon the little brass swan, brighter than he remembered last seeing it. He held it in his hands and turned it over a few times. Instead of sticking it back in the drawer, he put it onto the small shelf next to his bed, on a book of star navigation Liam had given him so many years ago.

On the island, he continued to flirt and banter with her, and slowly a warm feeling grew in him, bubbling up like a little spring. She too had known loss, had been left, and yet she had grown strong for it. Hook thought back to his conversation with Regina, about whether villains like them could ever find a happy ending. For the first time in centuries, the thing he focused on holding onto, before anger or grief or hatred, was hope. And then there was that kiss. Even the pain he felt when she swore it was a one-time thing, a thank you for saving her father, wasn’t enough to dull the hope he felt.

Then they had found Bae…Neal. And it was clear the Neal still felt something for Emma. Hook…Killian had warred with himself again, between his growing feelings for the woman and the loyalty he felt to Milah’s son. He finds himself promising Emma no trickery, that if he wins her, it will be her will to make it so.

Soon, Pan seemingly defeated, he had sailed them back to Storybrooke, and home. And in watching Emma and Neal, he realized the right course was to put his own feelings aside, and make a promise to let Henry’s parents have the chance they had passed up before. Sitting on his ship that night, he noticed the Swan was a little brighter than he had remembered it. He had sighed, and touched it, and had slept that night to a dream of Emma, in a beautiful dress, her golden hair a fall around her shoulders.

He tried to deny it, had tried to pass time with Tinker Bell, had tried to move on, but couldn’t bring himself to leave. Even if she never loved him back, he knew he couldn’t walk away from her now, at any cost. He had once told Tink that the only things were dying for were love and revenge. He would protect Emma, at any cost.

He had tried to stop the shadow and nearly met a nasty end for it. After Gold had sacrificed himself to kill Pan once and for all, he learned what the cost would be for the new curse. Learned that Emma would stay in this realm, that he would be forced to leave her. Trying to keep his promise to himself, he had taken a moment with her, and had said, simply, that he would think of her every day. And he had felt his heart rise in his chest when she had looked him deep in the eyes and said, with a sad smile, “Good.”


	3. Some Enchanted Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Caius holds onto hope, however ragged, and finds friends to stand with when the second curse of his life comes down.

He had stumbled across them during their years fighting the Evil Queen. A prince and a bandit princess, out to retake their Kingdom. And more importantly, passing through every village and hamlet in along the way, which let him inquire, again and again, for a seer with vibrant violet eyes. He had traveled around the realms for years now, and often he would arrive in a village and have them remember such a seer, or tell of her, but she had last been seen by the village great grandmother when she was small, or as a remembered tale passed down in the bar at the inn.

He had made his way as a soldier and a palace guard. Sadly, the one thing that there never seemed to be a lack of was a fight. After Agathan has cursed them both and Del had disappeared, he had made his way back to his general and shared what he had learned, and stayed to help foment a plan. There had still been a war, but it had been cut short as news of the distant king’s treachery had been spread and other rulers threatened to intervene. After it was over, he had asked to be released from service due to family issues. As the hero of the war, he could hardly be refused. And so he set off.   And a hundred years later, he found himself working as a tax collector for his enemy’s great grandson, a far more agreeable sort of monarch.

Every year, he took time wherever he was to mark Del’s birthday by sitting out under the night sky and looking at the stars, wishing on them that this would be the year the curse would break and he would find her, that they would get the chance that had twice been lost.

Now, after almost 900 years, he had little real hope left. He had crisscrossed the realms, by land and by sea, and had even found portals to some his people would never have known of, and still the one face he longed for, that still haunted his dreams as clear as when he had last saw her, held her, eluded him.

“You look like a soldier,” the prince had said, sizing him up.  
  
He nodded. “Once upon a time, I was. I’m Caius. You can call me Cai.”

It was an odd name in these parts, and both Snow and the prince she called Charming often called him Kay instead. He didn’t mind awfully.

So he had joined the rebel army and trudged from place to place, asking. He had got to know good people, and had lost some. As his command ability became obvious, Prince James had promoted him to the head of Snow’s guard. And he was there when their victory seems assured. He felt the joy with the rest of them, but watching James and Snow White wrapped up in each other’s arms, he feels the hollowness as well. They had given him a knighthood for his service in the war, and he was touched, even if it wasn’t the first he had held.

Snow observed him one night, shortly before the wedding. He had overseen the changing of the guard shifts around the castle, and now, night fallen, he sat on a bench in the castle garden, looking up at the stars. “Do you ever notice,” she asked Charming, “that our Sir Kay can be very melancholy?”

Charming looked up from the desk where he had been reading dispatches about pockets of unrest among his adopted father’s lands. “I suppose. He’s quiet. And he’s clearly been gone for a soldier for a long time.”

“He seems young, though,” Snow said. “Not much older than us, if any. And yet he just seems tired…and lonely.”

“Not everyone is as outgoing as you, darling,” Charming said, rising and walking over, wrapping his arms around her.

“Mmmmm…” She snuggled against him. “Maybe he needs to meet someone. Maybe I could ask the Blue Fairy to help find his love. Or I could find a nice lady of the court…”

“Snow,” Charming said, warningly. “If he wants our help, he’ll ask.”

When word came of the curse, Cai found himself in a panic. If Del was caught somewhere by the curse and transported, would she know she was a seer? If not, she couldn’t break her own curse. And the war council said their memories would be erased, in this new land. If he couldn’t remember her, how could he fight to find her. He rode out for days between news the curse was coming, frantically checking the nearby towns, hoping beyond hope that maybe, just maybe she would be there. No sign.

When the curse was spotted in the sky, slowly moving towards them, he went to the castle garden. He had waited too long to leave. There was no hope he could outrun it, not really. And it didn’t matter either way. If Del was within range of it, she would be carried away with him. If not, well, he would lose the one thing that had kept him going all this time.

Charming found him. “Kay, you can dismiss the guards with families. People should be with family now.”

“Yes, Highness,” he said. He stood to go.

“Kay.” He turned to look at his sovereign. “Do you have any? Family, I mean.”

Cai found himself laughing, bitterly. “My father died when I was 14. I last saw my mother when I was 21. And I have spent the last 900 years living under a curse, trying to find the woman I love.”

Charming looked nonplussed. “Well. Huh.”

“It’s an interesting story, Sire, but I don’t think we have time today.” He smiled and offered his hand to the prince. “Remind me someday, when this curse breaks, and I’ll tell you over some ale.”

A rueful smile crossed the younger man’s lips. He shook hands with his favorite knight. “We’ll do that. In the meantime, I’ll tell Snow to hold off on her matchmaking plans for you and lady Fleur.”

“My gratitude, Highness.” Cai smiled sadly back at him, then went to dismiss the men with families to go be with their loved one.

Later, when the curse came down, and the Queen’s men stormed the castle, he found himself picturing Del’s face. Then he fell into the Darkness.

In a town called Storybrooke, Kevin Harper woke up in his bunk at the firehouse. It was early, so he got up and made coffee, then took a cup out to watch the sunrise break over the water. Violet light washed over the sea, and the smell of salt air filled his nose, and for a moment, he felt horribly alone and homesick. But Kevin Harper had been born and raised in Storybrooke, and it seemed a crazy thing to feel. So he drank down the dregs and went inside to work on double checking the first aid kits on the fire trucks.


	4. Like a Wreck Upon Your Shores

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Killian Jones gets lost in his own bad press and has to find his way back to step one...

 

When they had returned to the Enchanted Forest, he knew he couldn’t stay with the others. Knew that he didn’t have a place with them, though Snow and Charming would try to make him one. His place was with her, and failing that, knowing she was lost to him, he had his crew and a life to go back to. She was the good in his world, and without her, he saw no real reason not to be bad.

However, it turned out that, for the most part, he had becoming shockingly bad at being bad. Oh, true, they made fine highwaymen, for want of his ship. But even as they raked in the booty, his men questioned his new orders that they not kill unless it was in defense of their own lives. And the first time they had paid the services of some lovely tavern denizen to entertain their beloved captain for an evening, he found that he…couldn’t. He had gone so far with the first one as to find a room, but when push came to shove, as it were, he couldn’t get beyond her face in his mind’s eye.

“Believe me, lass,” he said to the girl, who looked shocked. “It really is me, not you.” And he had given her a coin worth more than a night’s work to keep her silence. And so it went for a few months, until that frightful mermaid had bashed him on the head and dragged him into the search for her lost prince. He really, really wanted to return the favor at first, but somewhere, deep in his heart, he found himself asking what Emma would have him do. And when she shared the news that Blackbeard, that old basterd bilge rat, might have his bloody ship, well…

In the end, he wondered if he really was worth redeeming. The choice between the _Jolly_ and some prince he had never met, even with the girl’s anguish on display, had been too much. Especially when he factored in how very much he loathed Teach. In a split second, he made a choice, and he could hear his men in his head, cheering him soundly. Then he looked at Ariel face, the anguish and the pain. And he heard the demons of his nature congratulate him. If his love was forever to be lost to him, then why should her’s be of any consequence to him at all.

And in the next moment, he heard the soft, pained, disappointed voice of the woman he would never see again. “Hook, how could you?”

It was like someone had flayed him, as shame and horror burned hot through him. More than stealing, more than banditry, more than the illusion of whoring his way through the realms, he knows Emma would be appalled by this, by the death of a good man. One he could have saved. He could have found out the man’s whereabouts, and then found a way to get the _Jolly_ back. He could have at least tried. Watching Ariel pass from grief to rage to determination, watching her slip into the sea, he wished he could follow alongside her and sink down to Davy Jones’s locker. But, as he and Regina had known, they weren’t heroes, and he just didn’t have the guts.

He put in, not long after finding his ship, in Perduta Speranza, and made his way up the cliff trail into the town. It was much unchanged, still a decrepit hole filled with liars and killers and thieves. He followed his feet like it was yesterday, until he found the alley. But it was empty. No sign of the mermaid and the eye, no door at the end. He had asked in the Tavern at the head of the alley, but if there ever had been a seer there, no one could actually recall it. It made sense, in that almost 300 years had passed since he had been this way. Surely, the seer was long dead. But his hopes that Delphine could tell him if he had lost himself for good this time, if he might someday find his way back to her, were dashed. Lost Hope indeed.

He promised himself then, that fate would be of his own making. He would do what he had to in order to find a way back, would make himself worthy of her again. He had sailed on, following tales of powerful magic and of portals between realms, and rumors of black market beans for sale, any lead. And he spent his nights dreaming of her, of them, together, with Henry. A family for the first time in so long. Of home.

And then the bird had found him, in the middle of the sea, with a spell and a potion to make her remember. He thought for a moment he was hallucinating, that he was truly going mad with grief and want of her. Then the damn bird had pecked his hand, and he had taken the spell and the potion and had opened a portal into the mortal realm.

And he had found her, and in his pockets, the vial of potion had weighed in counterbalance to the bright little brass swan. And he had tried to kiss her, True Love’s Kiss, and had been disappointed, crushed even, when it had done nothing. Instead, he had been forced to spend time tracking her through the big city, trying and trying again to get her to hear him, to trust him. When she finally took the potion, he was so exhausted and relieved and a little bit heartbroken over her saying she loved this other guy, this Walsh, he nearly collapsed. Instead, he found his hand slipping into his pocket to touch the little brass swan, and felt it warm to his touch.

Walsh had been self-fixing problem, as it turned out, though his heart ached for her and the pain the truth about her near-fiancé had caused her. Also, flying monkeys, what the deuce? But even understanding that Swan had been under a spell, that she had no memory of Storybrooke or being the Savior or Neverland or… He shook himself, because that was a rabbit hole of a different stripe and he was pretty sure that in that direction lay true madness. So he had been kind, and helpful, and had given her space. Well, as much space as one could with an almost 9 hour car ride in her tiny vehicle.

Arriving back in Storybrooke late that evening, Henry asleep in the back of the car. And as much as he ached to go with her, up to see her parents, her trust in asking him to stay with Henry, to guard him, was breathtaking. And, he hoped, there would be time.

They took rooms at Granny’s. Emma and Henry, because ostensibly, they were friends of his mother’s, but strangers to the boy. And Killian because this is where Emma was, and that made it where he needed to be. He found himself, dogging her steps, ready to fight with her and for her if she would only let him. And he was surprised, when they topic arose, how much he had felt Walsh’s role in her life in that year. But they had moved quickly past it, and he found himself stepping back from the role of captain to that of a trusted lieutenant. Her trusted lieutenant.

When Neal had reappeared again, he had been less heart sore than before. The time away from him had brought back the memory of the boy he wished he had tried harder to save. The one he taught to fight, to navigate by the stars, to take the helm of a ship. He felt too the loss of the friendship with the man, the one he had been far too concerned with outdoing in the contest for Emma’s heart. Their exchange in the hospital had lightened him, made him feel more like the man he had wanted to be, all those years ago.

And then in an instant, Neal was gone. Rationally, he knew there was nothing he could have done to save him. Even if he had kept him at the hospital. Even if he and Belle had found the truth sooner, Neal had been dead before he ever crossed back into Storybrooke. It was a miracle that Gold had held onto him as long as he had. The grief washed over him, like a wreck upon rocks. Waste, waste, waste. And the boy. He couldn’t imagine what Henry would feel when and if his memories truly returned. And that seemed to be the most comfort he could give Emma, right now. Being there for Henry.

The two of them, on Grumpy’s borrowed boat. He tripped over the reason a few times. Henry looking at him, asking how he could have known his dad as a boy and weren’t they the same age. But when they got down to it, he was able to connect with Henry as he once had with Bae: one fatherless son to another.


	5. A few hundred years of solitude...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Adelphia discovers the nature of her curse, and that there are no easy ways out of it.

Adelphia woke up with a throbbing head, in a bed that wasn’t hers. Looking around the small, dim room, lit with the light of a grey dawn, she recognized almost nothing. She rose and opened a small chest at the foot of the bed, finding a couple of plain gowns and under smocks and a thin wool cloak. A wooden comb and a cheap oil lamp sat on small stool beside her bed. In the other corner of the room, a wooden table and a chair sat, covered with a thin cloth. In a basket hanging from the rafters, she found bread and hard cheese, some vegetables, and a flagon of weak wine. A small fire place with a cook pot set into one wall.

A door, hung with a curtain, separated her room from one beyond and she pushed it aside to find a garish, bright space. The walls were painted a horrible yellow the color of saffron, and shawls and scarves draped the ceiling. Oil lamps she had seen traders from the East selling hung around the room, and in the middle a small table sat with a bright incised bowl in the middle, and cushions on the floor on either side. It was what she imagined people might expect a seer’s rooms to look like. She shuddered, and her fingers reached down, fingering the bracelet at her wrist.

She picked a shawl at random from the ones hanging from the ceiling, and then went into the back room. Changing from the gown she had been cursed in, she dressed in a smock and a gown the color of brown moss, then added the wrap like orange leaves. Taking a pitcher from a small shelf past the table, she walked back through the company room and pushed open the door.

She stepped into a small stone alleyway, and looked up at a small wooden sign of a mermaid holding an all seeing eye. Well, people would notice her soon enough. She made her way down to the main street, looking for a town well. A block over, she joined the small crowd of women queuing up for water, and listened to the chatter. One or to noticed her, and she saw them pointing at her in a way that seemed to imply suspicion. When her turn came, she drew up the bucket as fast as she could and filled her pitcher before passing it to the next woman in line.

Hurrying back to the alley, she ducked inside and into the inner room, then sat to eat. It was mechanical, wooden. The first day of…what? Cai was lost to her, again, forever. She had hope that maybe, just maybe, the curse would break quickly, and she could try to find her way…where? Her betrayal of the temple would shame her family. She was fairly certain she couldn’t go home.

Sighing, she finished eating, and then cleaned up the crumbs. If this was going to be home, she better get used to it. And then, before she could think what to do next, someone knocked at the door. She opened it to find two women, wanting to know if it was true, that she could see things. And so it began.

Time passed and word spread, and she was busy beyond measure, until she set hours. Many of those coming to her were poor, so she would ask for the minimum payment they could afford, if any. A dinar or some eggs, a hunk of cured meat or sausage, some fabric. If they couldn’t pay, she still read for them. She found herself setting hours, so she had some time to recover, but she never lacked for people to read. Sadly, she also mostly saw what would be, the immutable fate. Even if she told them exactly what was to come, she couldn’t help them stop it. And the few who she could, who she saw a choice of fates for, often didn’t really heed her, and suffered the same as those who had no choices. And so it was, day in, day out, for months.

Then, she woke up one day, and the light in her window was different. Pulling on her cloak, she hurried to the door and pulled it open, and while it still opened onto an alley, it wasn’t the same one. She closed the door, looked around the room, and then opened it again. Definitely not the same alley. Within an hour, someone was knocking on her door, asking if she was the seer.

Every few months, a new town overnight. Every time, people knew of her before she had even really stepped out the door. Nearly more readings than she could manage, even working herself raw. Day in and day out. Holy days and work days and feast days. Season to season, year to year. Sometimes, she was in a place a month or two. Sometimes, eight or nine. Long enough to know people, and to make friends, and then, gone.

At the end of the first one hundred years, and countless villages in countless realms later, she woke up one morning and lay in bed. She was weary and heart sore and tired. And so she rose, and walked to the river bridge in the town, tucking rocks in pockets of her gown and her apron and into the small rucksack around her shoulders. It was early and no one was out yet. Climbing up onto the edge, she closed her eyes, and pictured Cai’s face, still clear as a bell and in her dreams every night. Beloved Cai, surely long dead now. Then she let go.

Her body hit the water and the weight of her clothes and the stones, the water filling her simple boots, dragged her under. She fought her own inclination to swim, her own instinctive terror, and instead opened her mouth to let the river flow in. As her lungs burned and her vision blackened, she felt relief. It was over. Then she gave into the darkness.

She woke up in her bed, her hair not even damp, and shoes on the floor. The only way she knew it wasn’t a dream was the rock in her pocket, poking into her side. A few months later, she tried again, with a knife dragged down her wrists, and then awoke with her skin pristine and her gown unstained. Poison was agonizing, and equally ineffective. She sighed, deeply, and gave in to the knowledge that she was truly trapped.

As time passed, she would wake up sometimes and open the door to a familiar alleyway. Places she had been before, the folk she knew there now long dead. The first time it happens, she stops calling herself Adelphia, and simply goes Delia. She isn’t sure if people know she is the same seer their grandparents spoke of, but she thought it might be highly disconcerting for them if she was. And time passed.

In her three hundredth year, she found herself in a new village, somewhere she had never been before. Not long after her arrival, an older woman had shown up at her door. “Name's Elasit,” she said. “I’m the wise woman in this village, and I don’t need no help. So you can just be moving along.”

“Delilah,” she said, giving the name she was currently known by. “Tea?”

The old woman gave her a side eye, but followed her back to the little back room. Over the years, she had acquired a number of things which made it more home like. Nicer sheets and a good bolster for the bed. A pretty mirror in a polished brass frame. Books, as she could find them. Good, solid red pottery dishes.  And two comfortable chairs with cushions. She set about making tea in a nice iron tea pot, picked up during her time in an eastern village a lifetime before, and then poured it for them into a pair of stout cups. She took a small cake down from the rafters and cut them each a slice.

And then she told Elasit everything. Her background and how she had come to be cursed. The nature of it. The limitations of her life, and how, into each village she was dropped, there was an invisible line, a boundary she couldn’t pass beyond. “So, you see,” she said, sipping her cup. “I actually can’t move along, as it were. Not until the curse takes me.”

Elasit scratched her hair. “You doesn’t do magic, then, dear?”

“Only a seer,” she said.

The old woman grinned. “Well, I’m not as one of them, so I suppose it will be all right. If a problem needs magic, you can sends them to me, and if it needs seeing, I can sends them to you.”

“Elasit,” she said. “This may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Two months later, the two women were having super in Elasit’s house, when Del asked, “Elasit, would you consider teaching me magic? If I wasn’t planning to sell my skills, just to learn it?”

The old woman considered, then nodded. Over time, she learned small enchantments for opening the door before someone knocked and for lighting and extinguishing her lamps without moving them. She learned philters and potions and physiks for illness. She could change objects from one thing to another, or move them between rooms. It gave her something else to think about. But every night, Del went to sleep and was haunted in her dream by green eyes and strong hands and a voice she missed like a fiber gone from her heart.

It was the longest she had ever been anywhere, over three years, when she woke up one morning to different light. For that day, at least, she stayed in bed and wept.


	6. I don't care what you did last summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emma wonder if, now that she's almost ready to leap, is he still ready to catch her?

Nothing about her life had ever really been easy. Even before she found out that she was the Savior of a group of fairytale characters. That her birth parents were Snow White and Prince Charming and she had been given up to save her from a curse. That her birth son had been adopted by her Evil Step-Grandmother, and had been fathered by the son of Rumplestiltskin. That the man who would crack the ice off of her heart would be Captain Freaking Hook.

Before all that, she had been the worst sort of cautionary tale for the foster care system, tossed from place to place like driftwood. Or, as one particularly nasty foster mother had called her, a bad penny, to be gotten rid of as fast as possible. She had become a thief in order to survive, then everything with Neal. Then bail bonds work, which was not warm and fuzzy, nor particularly safe.

But on the list of top five worst life experiences, holding Neal as he died ranked somewhere only slightly better than giving up Henry in the first place. It wasn’t that she was in love with him, no matter what anyone seemed to think. Even knowing the real reason he had done what he had done to her, she still couldn’t forgive him for not fighting for her, for the supposed love he had for her. For being one more person to cut her lose.

No, what broke her heart was knowing that this would break Henry’s, if his memories ever came back. He had gained a second mother in her, and she knew that if there was one thing that Regina really, truly loved, it was Henry (though she was getting suspicious about the woman’s feelings for Robin Hood). But having a father…a dad in Neal. It had cut her to the quick when they had to leave before the counter to Pan’s curse, because Henry was losing that.

She had stood, watching the boy watch as everyone shoveled dirt onto Neal’s coffin, and she regretted bringing him back with her. He was sad in an academic way, and she knew that she could have spared him this. If she had thought she could, she would have left him in New York with one of his friend’s parents. But with Walsh…

Her walls had slammed back up after Walsh. Even under Regina’s memory spell, she should have sensed something wasn’t right. But she had been happy, and now she just didn’t trust herself. So when Hook…Killian had come up to her, she had tried to pick a fight. Leather conditioner and eyeliner indeed. But then she saw the grief in the pirates eyes, and remember he had known Neal…Baelfire long before she had, that he had almost been the boy’s step father (weirder and weirder, her life), and she remembered how good he’d been with Henry on the trip back from New York.

When Zelena had thrown down her challenge, she found herself surprised that she trusted him to take her son and keep him safe. She didn’t have a doubt in her mind, or her heart, that he would do anything to protect Henry.

That night, when things were over, when she stood speaking to him in the hall, she knew he was right. Rationally. But emotionally, she couldn’t. If she could keep Henry from remembering, from really feeling that loss, she would do it. Even if it meant saying goodbye to Storybrooke.

She tells Hook that, when she next leaves Henry with him. Warns him what she plans to do. Because as much as she loves this town and its people- her parents, Ruby, hell, she even likes Regina. As much as she…feels for him, things she isn’t ready to quantify. Despite that, all of that, she will do everything in her power to protect Henry. Anything. And she keeps pushing, wanting to know what he had done in that lost year. After all, he was the only one who could remember it, other than her and Henry. He dances around it as nimbly as the dancers from the dance company she had gone to see with Henry’s class trip.

And she thinks that maybe, just maybe he worries she’s going to be the one to leave him, not the other way around, like she’s always feared. She’s started trusting her magic, trusting herself, and it’s his voice in her head, telling her she’s amazing and extraordinary and beautiful, and then she’s saved herself on the bridge. She’s using the magic of the mirror. She wants to share it with him, her wonder and joy, but he suddenly pulls away. Even when she tells him she doesn’t care about the past, she just wants him to be there with them. He goes anyway.

That night, she could have put it aside to his being tired, maybe. But then, the next day, at Regina’s, he’s…hollow. The smarmy humors, the glib jokes that he used to charm, to put people at ease, were absent. She found him in the library, starring at an apple distractedly. She had made an honest to god joke, still pleased with her success, but he hadn’t risen to the bait.

Then, as they tried to summon Cora, when she had rested her hand on his brace, she felt him pull away from her just slightly. Later, as they left the house, his hand had briefly brushed her back, a move her had made before and secretly, a comfort to her. This time, his hand moved back from her like she had scalded him.

Worst of all, when she had talked him into going to the diner with her, he had sat brooding in the booth, bent over the magic books. Even after she had poofed her cup of cocoa too him, he seemed…miserable. Taking his hook had been a desperate attempt to try to get a laugh, and when that failed, she wasn’t sure what to do.

Then, Belle had come to them, and suddenly everything had gotten more complex than before. Time travel, and the possibility that she wouldn’t exist, that most of them wouldn’t exist. Her eyes had found his, and saw the fear and pain reflected there. And something more. Loss. Unspeakable loss. And more than anything, she wanted to talk to him. To hear him say it would be all right. Instead, she watched as he made excuses, and walked out the door.

 

 


	7. With or Without You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kevin is Kay is Caius, and he still hasn't found what he's looking for? Or has he? Damned curses.

Chief Kevin Harper of the Storybrooke fire department was in his office at the fire station, working on that week’s duty roster, when a wave of magic hit like a tidal wave. The coffee cup in his hand crashed to the floor; shattering into a thousand pieces as memories rushed back, crowding into the life he had known here. (His father, killed in the line of duty, raised by his mother and grandfather, a third generation fireman…wrong wrong wrong… _Del_ ).

He heard the commotion in the engine bay and moved out to find a good chunk of the Royal Guard starring at each other, as perplexed as he felt. No time now, maybe later. “Men, we need to report for duty. Spread out, find the Prince and Snow White.”

They had jogged toward the center of town, and rounding the corner, he saw them in the middle of the street.

He took a knee before the Royal couple. “What are your orders, your Highness,” he asked, addressing Snow.

Snow looked around. “Check the town. We need to see who is here, and get an accounting.”

Cai rose and ordered his men to different areas to take a census. After they had gone, he turned to walk back to them, but saw the cloud of purple smoke moving toward them. “Oh no,” he said. “Not again.”

This time, when the smoke had cleared, he stood where he had been, on a Storybrooke street. He still had his memories, both as Cai and as Kevin. Looking, he saw Snow and Charming unharmed. “Sire?” he called.

Charming looked at him. “All right, Kay?”

“Yes, sire. My lord, the guard will do as Her Highness has asked.” He paused, tried to compose the mounting fear in his voice. “Sire, I can’t recall Del being here. I need to find her.”

Snow looked at Charming. “Del?”

“I’ll tell you soon,” he said. Turning back to Cai, he nodded. “You have leave. Go.”

****

Two days later, he was ready to drop. By the time he heard the news about Emma and Snow, they had been gone almost a day, as he had been checking every house, cabin and shack around town. He felt guilty, like he failed in his duty. He couldn’t find Del, had to acknowledge that she may have never been in town in the first place. And he failed to protect the people he had sworn to.

Grumpy sent him to Mary Margaret…Snow’s apartment. He knocked quietly, and the Prince let him in. Inside, the Mayor’s son nodded to him as he read through the books of stories from the Enchanted Realms.

“I’m sorry, Highness,” he said, softly. “If I had been here…”

“You couldn’t have stopped it.” The Prince took a sip of his beer. “We’ll get them back. How was your search?”

He brought his hands up and presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, then shook his head.

“Del is…singular.” He said. Then laughed. “I know everyone says that about their loved one, but she is.”

The Prince nodded, and then looked across the room. “Henry, I need to talk to Chief Harper. Can you take the book up to your room and get ready for bed?”

“Sure, Grandpa.” The boy gathered up his read. “Good night, Sir Kay.”

“Good night, Henry.” When the boy had headed upstairs, David grabbed a second beer from the fridge and popped the top, setting it in front of him.

“Even when she was a child, there was no one quite like her.” He took a pull of the beer and sighed at the memory. “Her hair is unusual, dark almost too black, but with a red undertone. But her eyes. She has the most ethereal eyes. No one I spoke to could remember meeting anyone like I described. “

“I’m so sorry, Kay,” the Prince said. “How did you two come to be cursed?”

Cai sighed, and took a sip of his beer. “Once, a long, long time ago…”

****

Life, after Regina’s curse, turned out to be rather like life before it. He and the rest of the guard kept up their duties at the fire station. As David had pointed out, they were still guarding the kingdom, just from a different sort of foe. And now, with memories of their other lives.

And true enough, they had, in the end, managed to get Snow and Emma back. He briefly had hope that if they could come this way, maybe he could cross the way they had come, get back to Enchanted Realms, and find Del. But the way through had been a one-time use only, and he had been trapped in his own curse, just like he had been for lifetimes before now.

The other guardsmen commented about it, quietly among themselves, when they thought he couldn’t hear. How they missed the old Kevin, who had a sense of fun, and liked to play pranks with his men. Instead, Sir Kay brooded more now than they ever remembered in the Enchanted Forest. He was still a good captain, making sure they had what they needed, that they and their families were taken care of. But now, often as not, he took a plate of food and ate in his office. When there was downtime, he would sit out to the side of the building and watch the sea.

It was almost a relief when Cora and Captain Hook had arrived in Storybrooke, bringing mayhem and disorder. It broke up the monotony, and gave him something else to focus on. In the days that followed, he did what he could to help Snow and Charming and Emma combat them, and their plans. And when things shifted to the strangers, Greg and Tamara, he had stood by them again, right to the end.

As the Charmings and Emma had prepared to sail after Henry with the, David had pulled him aside, and asked him to stand guard, assist Belle until they could return. He had clasped hands with the man and swore to it. He had no way to get to the Enchanted Realms, but he sure as hell could protect those right in front of him. And maybe, when they all returned, he could try again to find a way.

****

When the Jolly Roger had returned to Storybrooke, he had been pleased. Good had won. Then they all learned of Pan’s trick, and the cost of stopping his curse. While his heart ached for the Royals and what they would lose, and many of the people in town were fearful of the return to the other world, Cai was secretly overjoyed. If he was there, he could try to find out what happened to Del, why she hadn’t been with them when the first curse had come down. He knew, from Emma and Snow’s tale of their adventures, that Cora had cast a protection spell around a swath of the Enchanted Forest. Maybe Del had been in a village in that area. Or maybe she had been in another realm entirely- Wonderland, or maybe Agraba.

When the curse washed over them and dropped them on the other side, he had helped get the Prince and Snow White safely to Regina’s castle, and installed there. Then he had gone to Charming, and begged leave to go find Del. Charming had done more than give his blessing, giving him the swiftest of the horses and a bag of gold and silver coins.  
  
And so he had set off, careful to avoid the areas with the worst ogre infestations, traveling to places where he knew that Cora’s spell had protected. He searched high and low, asking in cities and towns, hovels, and inns. But nowhere did he find word of a woman with light violet eyes.

He spread out into other Kingdoms, and went on for months, until news of the new threat, the Wicked Witch, had reached him. He had turned around and ridden back to the palace. When he arrived gate house, dusty and worn out, the Prince had come down to meet him.

David looked as tired and careworn as he felt. “Kay,” he said. “No word?”

He shook his head. “Not even a whisper. Before, I would catch stories, passed down, remembrances. But years have passed while so many of us were gone. Now, it’s like I’m a mad man, chasing someone who never existed.”

“She does,” the Prince said, with conviction. “You aren’t crazy, my friend.”

“No, but I think the curse won’t let me find her until she break’s hers.” He sighed, running a hand over his face.   “Since that clearly hasn’t happened, my place will be here, fighting with you.”

He saw the understanding and the sympathy in his liege lord’s face. “If you wish to, we are grateful. I’ll have someone stable your horse. Go by the kitchens and get a meal, and I will have someone show you to a room. Get a night’s sleep, and we will talk in the morning.

****

This curse was almost crueler, in a way. More insidious. This time, he had known who Kevin Harper was, and what Regina’s curse had made of him. And he had known himself as Caius, as Sir Kay. Cursed to himself, ever searching for his Adelphia. But the last year was gone. What had he done, in that year? In the place he had most hoped to find her? Had he found Del? Had she broken the curse? Were they married and happy? Or was he still cursed and looking?

He had spent that first day going around, asking again if anyone in town knew a beautiful girl with violet eyes. Again, no one had seen anyone like that. And so he had done the one thing he could do. He had gone to Snow and Charming, and offered to serve them as they needed him. Because Del wasn’t here, and until they could figure out this new curse, and maybe break it, he had no hope of seeing her again.


	8. Learning to Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a formerly Evil Queen finds herself believing that perhaps she could be happy ever after, after all...

Daniel had smelled of leather and saddle soap, hay and horses. Earthy and nice. Grounded. More than anything she had wanted to feel grounded. Needed it, needed him to see past the world her mother was trying to thrust upon her. Now, with decades of time to think, with Henry and these last interactions with Cora, Regina realized that she couldn’t rationally blame Snow for what happened, even if getting her heart to listen was harder.

What she had lost with Daniel was the sense of boundaries he gave her. Without him, it had been easy to see magic as an answer. Vengeance. Hatred. So easy to be just like Cora.

Meeting Robin in this world had been a revelation, even before she saw his tattoo. She wondered if he was able to accept her because he hadn’t been caught in the curse. But then, she remembered Emma and Snow’s accounts of what had been left in the Enchanted Forest and realized even those who hadn’t been caught in the curse had been affected by it.

Here was a man who didn’t seem to hate her as a default, even if he had almost impaled her. When she put up walls and pushed him, he had pushed back. And in smarm and charm, he gave both the pirate and the prince a run for their money. But it had been that moment in the woods, when she had seen his little boy run to him.

More than anything, she and Daniel had wanted to go somewhere and start a family. A home, and children, and love. After all that time, when she had decided her life was empty, and she had moved ahead with adopting Henry, a small part of her remembered that hope all those years ago.

More than the tattoo, the joy and love on his face for that little boy had sealed her fate. And she had wondered what he could possibly see in her. Because even when she had fled from their moment in the farmhouse, he hadn’t backed away. When Zelena had shown up at Neal’s wake, she had seen from the corner of her eye his friends restraining him as he tried to leap to her defense.

When he had found her in the forest, as she sat contemplating that damnable letter, he hadn’t tried to be overly consoling. Hadn’t expected her to weep. He had picked her pocket, and then given as much sass back to her as she spat at him. When she had let him read the letter, he had listened, without judgment, and she found herself letting him hear her hopes, her fears.

When she realized that she would be safest without her heart, he had taken it without question, agreed to stay away from the fight and guard it. She saw the struggle in his eyes, but also the trust she was strong enough to do the right thing. Standing this near, she smelled the forest on him, leaf fodder and campfire smoke, earthy and…

She came back that night, after Zelena had been temporarily thwarted, and his face had been….relieved. Joyous. This man had genuinely feared for her. Had cared if she lived or died, and she thought that he felt that way for reasons beyond fear of what Zelena was planning for all of them.

“I don’t always realize what I have right in front of me.” Robin had looked at her, a searching look, and she felt herself freeze. Instead, she placed her heart back into his hands. “Would you hold onto this a while longer?”

“You’re really going to entrust something so valuable to a common thief like me?” he asked, feeling the weight in his hand, searching her eyes.

Regina took a deep breath and a small leap. “You can’t steal something that’s been given to you.”

****

Regina was furious, but not with him. The look in his eyes. Fear for what had almost happened to Roland. Horror at having failed in his promise to her. And something she wasn’t ready to name, that she couldn’t wrap her head around.

Zelena would pay, and pay dearly. And then that horrible séance and the talk with Snow. About mothers and daughters and fraught relationships. About being open to something for herself, a happy ending. Even and she scoffed at the idea, there was one face in her mind.

She had found him in the woods, and his distress at what was lost, his fierce determination to fight for it, and for her had broken down the last barrier she was holding on to. “Your heart was lost to Zelena on my watch, but I promise you, I will get it back.”

And then her hands were tangled in his collar, and she was kissing him, lost in it, falling. He had frozen for just a second, then kissed her back. When she finally pulled back, he was staring at her in shock, and she was terrified that she had misjudged, that he wasn’t feeling…

Then his arms had come around her back and he was holding her for dear life, and they were drowning in each other. It had been so long, Regina had forgotten how to quantify these feelings. Excitement. Joy. And maybe, just maybe hope.

****

In the next few days, she just couldn’t stop kissing him. The warmth of his touch, the scent of the woods, the scrape of his stubble against her cheeks. Even when Henry had caught them in the hall at Granny’s, she had shifted a little off her axis. It was a raw wound, having him look at her like a vaguely familiar acquaintance.

Robin had brought her back out of the moment threatening to swamp her like a small boat in rough seas, his hands touching her, his eyes on hers, making her believe that they could break the curse and get his memories back.

Later, in the boat house at the pier, when Henry had suddenly looked at her. Had called her “Mom”, she thought her joy might implode her into dust. Then the terror of him in Zelena’s grasp, only to wake to find him free, and looking at her like he did as a little boy. The one she had nursed through fevers and read to and helped with science projects and class dioramas.

Standing, she pulled her son… _her son_ …to her. “I love you, Henry,” she said, and kissed his forehead.

With a woosh, a wave of magic flooded out from them, knocking into everyone as it went. Her eyes had flown open in shock. It couldn’t be…she loved Henry, and Henry loved her, but she didn’t have a heart…she was a villain and happy endings….

In the aftermath, she was grateful to Emma for letting Henry walk away with her. She knew he had enough love for both of them. As they walked away, Henry asked about that guy she had been kissing.

“Who is he?” the young man…and he was that now, a young man…asked.

“His name is Robin…Hood.” And almost as if by magic, and maybe it was, of a sort, Robin appeared.

“At your service,” he said. Then his eyes had turned to hers, and knowing the memories he must had seen, she blushed, slightly. “And that missing year, things were a bit rocky between us, yeah?”

“For some reason,” she said, smiling at his teasing tone. “You are so much more likable here in Storybrooke.” They both laughed, as Henry looked on, grinning. Robin dropped his arm around her, protectively, as Henry took her hand.

And even without her heart, in that moment, Regina felt complete.

 


	9. And Far, Far Away...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Del is clear of the curse, and sees the fate of a King she can't stop....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my characters. No infringement meant.

 

She was in a land far, far away when the Great Curse swept through the Enchanted Forest. She remembered the first morning when she woke up to a sensation of pure heat, and dryness to the air she had never known. The bolster on the bed was oppressive and she struggled out from under it, thirsty. She put on the lightest shift she owned and the thinnest gown, and still it felt as though she was wrapped in heaviest wool. She had pulled a shawl up and over her head, then walked out into the street with her largest pitcher. The light was bright enough to blind.

The village was not in Agrabah proper, but a few miles away, serving those who could not make the last push into the great gates before they shut for the night. She got her water and returned to the magical shop in the wall, drinking much of it before taking her money down from its hiding place and heading back into the market to buy clothing of the local fashion.

After that, one day was very like another in any of the cities and villages she had found herself in. People came, rich and poor, young and old, and she read until her head ached and her soul bled, until she was worn and tired. Almost always, the immutable future, the set path.

A month or more passed, until the day when the line of those waiting outside to see her suddenly scattered as she was showing out the woman she had just read for. In their place was a man in fine embroidered robes at the head of a small contingent of guards. “Are you the prophetess Dalila?”

She sighed and nodded. This wasn’t the first such visit she had known in the centuries she had been cursed. “I am. How may I assist you, my lord?”

“My master, the Sultan, commands that you attend him in Agrabah. We will leave now.”

“No,” she said simply. The man looked at her like she had grown three heads.

“You would dare to defy the Sultan and refuse him your skill? When you will read for these gutter rats and wastrel dogs?” He drew himself up, dignity clearly insulted.

“First, my Lord, I did not say that I refused to read for your Master, only that I could not go to him.” She paused, considering. “I labor under an enchantment that takes me from place to place, where I must ply this skill for all who ask. I choose not where I am sent, nor can I leave the bound the spell sets for me. Even if you put me on one of those camels I see in the street and ride me forth, I cannot cross the line. Secondly, I would remind you that those gutter rats and wastrel dogs are subjects of your Master, and if he wishes to be better, perhaps he should help them, rather than disdain them.”

She wasn’t surprised when he slapped her face and ordered them men to bring her. The pompous fool had her placed on a donkey that was lead tied to an Arabian one of the guards rode, while the vizier mounted one of the camels.

The guard on the horse looked at her with pity. “Comfortable, lady?” he asked quietly. She caught the high official shooting him daggers, so she nodded and held on as they took off. Not more than a mile out of the village, her donkey suddenly stopped as if confronted by a wall, pulling the great white horse to a stop.

The vizier ordered his camel down and stormed over to her and the guard, who starred at her perplexed. “You are coming!”

“I am really not. If you don’t believe me, watch.” She dismounted the donkey, and the animal immediately moved forward. She glanced at the guard who had been kind to her. “Perhaps you would like to try carrying me?”

The man looked at the vizier, then picked her up like a bridegroom and tried to step forward, then stopped, shocked. He set her down. “I cannot mover her farther, my lord.”

“You do something,” the vizier seethed. He grabbed her arm and pulled, but she couldn’t budge. “Undo it.”

“If I could, I would have ages before coming here,” she said. “I am more than willing to read for your Sultan, but I am afraid he must come here.”

She thought he would stamp clear through the hard-packed dirt of the road. “Fine! He will be here the day after tomorrow.” The red faced man turned to the guard. “You will stay with her, and make sure she doesn’t leave.”

Then he stormed back to the rest of the troop, remounted the camel, and took off at the trot.

The guard sighed. “Where would you go?”

Del looked at him, young and with the sort of eyes that reminded her of another man years ago. “I just hope for your sake the curse doesn’t decide to relocate me before your Sultan comes.”

He grimaced, then offered her a hand to remount the donkey. “I’m called Farouk,” he said.

She smiled wryly. “I know.” Together, they turned and rode back toward town.

***

Farouk was a useful guest. He had made himself scarce while she read, coming back at sunset with skewered lamb on rice with bread and lentils, all on a small tray. They ate in the reading room, using their hands as he showed her.

He had started in amazement when she used a flick of her hand to light the lamps, which seemed far less exotic in this land, and had fixed a loose leg on her small table. He had also been surprisingly willing to talk, telling her about his wife, Khalida, and their three small children. When it was time to sleep, she had helped him make a bed out of the cushions and given him a blanket, then wished him a good night.

In two days’ time, she had put out a small sign to show she was closed for general readings, and waited. Close to noon, trumpets sounded and cheers from the street signaled the Sultan’s arrival.

She and Farouk waited outside her door, and the guardsman dropped to his knees when the Sultan approached, kissing the hem of his robe. Behind the great king, the vizier shot her an acid look. She bowed to the Sultan, who cocked an eyebrow at her. “People usually kneel to me,” he said.

“I am unusual, my lord, or you would not have troubled to see me.” She rose, and turned, gesturing into the room. “Please, come in.”

The Sultan moved to enter, then paused, glancing at the vizier. “You may wait outside, Sayeed. Farouk knows the lady and will attend me.”

Rage crossed the official’s face as the Sultan swept inside, followed by Del and Farouk, who pulled the door shut.

The Sultan glanced around, and then sat at the table, looking at her curiously. “So, you see the future,” he said, conversationally, as she took her cushion across from them. Farouk leaned against the wall next to the door.

She waved her hand, making two glasses of mint tea appear. “And the present, and the past.”

“And how much do you wish to charge me, to share this gift?” he asked, calculating in his head.

Del considered for a moment. “My price is Farouk.” The guard sputtered and looked at her. “I suspect that your vizier doesn’t like him much, after that little slight in the alley. Raise Farouk’s rank; make it clear he has your protection. He’s a wise young man, and would serve you well. That and the smallest coin in your purse, and you may ask whatever you wish.”

The Sultan raised an eyebrow, but pulled out the prescribed metal disk. “Done.” He dropped the coin into the bowl in the middle of the table. “Now, tell me….”

***

It was dark by the time the man left, somewhat shaken. She had seen an immutable future for him, and not a happy one. He had been angry at first, then resigned, then determined to change it. She had wondered if he would order Farouk to kill her, and knew it would just mean waking tomorrow in her bed.

She wished the Sultan well as he rose to leave. “By the way,” the ruler said. “Have you heard the news from the West? They say a curse of force like nothing ever seen has come down upon the Enchanted Forest and its Kingdoms. That people have simply vanished.”

Del look at him, only slightly surprised. “The signs that something…dark was coming have been there for years,” she said, considering. “The sight gave glimpses, but nothing definitive.”

“Perhaps you had best hope you are wrong about my fate, then.” The Sultan gave her a smile that was chilling. “After all, if your curse is as you say, you may have nowhere else to go.”

With that, he swept out the door. Farouk paused, looking at her. “Thank you, my lady.”

“Gods be with you, Farouk.” And he was gone.

She stayed in the little village two years, and within three months of their initial meeting, a gift arrived for her from Khalida, a beautiful robe in the style of the dessert people of Farouk’s tribe.

When the word came that the Sultan had been overthrown and Agrabah was in chaos, she sighed deeply, and prayed the Farouk and his family were safe. The next morning, she awoke to frigid cold and ice crusting her window.


	10. As Blue as it has Been...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emma is angry at just about everything, except maybe her brother and her son....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading....we are in the home stretch. The end is already written, I am just filling in the gap.
> 
> Comments are very appreciated, as are kudos.
> 
> As always, it's Adam and Eddy's world. I am just borrowing it.
> 
> Bonus points if you can place the chapter title.

 

Emma was angry. Angry at the man for not telling her the truth and giving her the agency to help him fix it. Angry at that freaking witch for cursing him in the first place. Angry at the universe and God and whoever who clearly thought she could handle more than she really could, because really, she was just done.

And now, now that she had a little time to cool off, angry at herself for reacting as harshly as she had. With a little time and space, and a talk with Henry, she knew now that Killian had reacted to try to make the best of a bad situation. That he thought he was getting Henry clear of the danger in a way that would pose the minimum risk to the boy.

She had lashed out and said the thing that was likely to cause maximum damage, because she had let him get too close, let him get under her skin and up against her walls, where he was chipping away at them like Andy Dufresne with his stupid little rock hammer in Shawshank. She felt the cracks and that scared the ever loving crap out of her.

So of course, of course Mary Margaret had to go into labor. Emma knew that she really only had the one option at that point, and she was prepared to go do it. Alone.

Only he wouldn’t let her…they wouldn’t. She wondered briefly what made David change his mind to the point of wanting Hook…Killian, he really was Killian these days, by her side. Or maybe David just didn’t want her to be alone.

As they tromped through the woods, she found herself getting more and more irritated with all of it. She just wanted to be normal, have a normal life, somewhere without curses and witches and infuriating pirates. Pirates who kept insisting that her nice, normal New York life wasn’t real. That maybe she wasn’t putting Henry first so much as running away again.

“Maybe you can see a future here,” he said, looking at her intently. “A happy one.”

“Let me guess,” she sought back, trying to plaster over the latest cracks in her foundations. “With you.”

Leave it to Zelena to interrupt. And then the next thing she knew, Killian was flying through the air and into the water trough, thrashing and kicking in the frigid water. Only when the wicked bitch and Gold disappeared was she able to pull his limp body free.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, not like this. No, no, no. “Hook! Hook! Wake UP! KILLIAN!” Oh god, he wasn’t supposed to die, he was three hundred years old, her stupid immortal pirate. “Please come back to me.”

It’s never a choice, but when he comes to, when he looks at her with horror, she feels gut punched. “What did you do?” he gasped, feeling his lips, and she can see the anguish in his eyes. “What did you do?”

Because his face, his stupid, handsome, precious face, is naked of masks. He’s an open book, like he accuses her so often of being. And what his pages tell her is that he thinks she should have let him die.

****

Later, when it is all over, and good has won through, of all people, Regina, she watches her parents reuniting, her little brother (so weird her life) between them. She expected to feel…put aside. Forgotten. Unwanted, like when the Swans had sent her back after they had their baby. But she doesn’t. She’s happy. For them. For Regina and Robin, for her brother. For Gold and Belle. For Henry. And for her.

She’s free, she thinks. No more magic, no more savior. She can take Henry and head back to New York, back to that good life.

And yet, there he is. Like always. Even going into the fight with Zelena, knowing they were probably doomed, he’d been there, beside her, willing to die in her cause. Their cause.

And here he was now, standing in the hallway. “I never thought I’d see one of those.” His blue eyes twinkle with joy and a sort of wistfulness.

“It’s called a baby,” she says, smirking. Hiding behind her biting wit from that weird feeling in her gut.

“No Swan.” He nods at her. “It’s called a smile.”

And then he’s thanking her, for saving his life. And there it is, that feeling, twisting around her. That he thought she wouldn’t save him….that she knows he thought she shouldn’t have saved him. That she had done that to him. She wishes she had her father’s sword to fight it with, to tamp it down and hide the feelings of shame at making him feel that.

What’s needed here, she thinks, is a clean break. Before he gets any closer, does any more damage. Before he scales her walls and gets inside. It will be better, for her, and for him. She can cut him loose to find a life without her. Best for all involved. So when he apologizes that his life came at the cost of her magic, she says the thing she thinks will cut him most.

“It’s okay. I won’t need it in New York.”

***

She dreams that night of the group home in Boston, where she was the oldest kid there, watching another little girl drive off with her brand new family, and wondering why it’s never her. She wakes gasping with tears on her face.

Throughout the day, visiting with her parents, investigating Zelena’s apparent death, and then with that party, the memory returns and the feeling she’s been fighting, of watching people leave her, of wanting to be the one who leaves first, grows. Right up until she leaves the party, with Killian on her heels, and sees the beam of light from the woods. Then it’s replaced by anger and exhaustion and just being done.

It’s only as she’s clutching Killian’s hand, as he tries desperately to keep her from falling, the way she had once done for Neal, that Emma thinks maybe, just this once, she doesn’t want to be the one to go.


	11. A Thing with Feathers...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Del lets go of hope in favor of contentment, and then learns that sometimes losing hope is what is taken to find it...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my world, I am just borrowing it.
> 
> Thank you for the kudos and comments.
> 
> I may try to knock out the rest of this tonight, then post the end by Friday. We shall see.

Del woke again to light through her window and the same mild headache that always came when the curse moved her. She had lost track at this point of how many towns, villages, and cities she had been in, how many people she had read for. Though the readings themselves stayed with her.

She opened her door to find herself in a non-descript alley, in a non-descript village. It felt like it was probably back in the Enchanted Realms, as opposed to Wonderland or Agrabah. So she started her day as she did most days.

She dressed, and grabbing a large amphora, she headed out to find water. Three turns later, and she was at the well, hauling water up and filling the large vessel. She imagined she would have customers by lunch time.

Del walked back through the streets, still quiet this early, humming a song to herself. It was neither happy nor sad, simply a work song she had learned once in a village a few lifetimes ago. Something to pass the time.

She had long ago given up hope that the curse would break. Even when she read for someone she saw with a choice, they clearly had never really made it. Hell, over 300 years had passed since she had last read for someone she had even felt a glimmer of hope for. A pirate in a rough port town, and a fall of gold.

She shook her head, because clearly that man was long dead, probably lost under the waves, down to Davy Jones. And yet, she had been so sure that he would turn his life back to the light, that he wouldn’t let vengeance consume him.

“Some seer I am,” she murmured. She opened the door to her little shop and passed through to her room behind it. Ladling some water into a pot, she unbanked her fire and set it to heating so she could add some oats for porridge. It would be just another day.

****

It had been over a year since she had come to this little place. She had read for every man, woman, and child in the village, and yet, the curse left her be. She found herself using the meager magic Elasit had taught her all those years ago to help people, smiling when she was able to ease a child’s colic or help save a boy trapped down a well.

When it became clear the curse was moving her not at all, she walked carefully one more to the road out of the village leading into the woods. She walked calmly, wondering if this was really it. If things were in fact over. Nearly two miles out, the farthest she had ever been given tether, she hit the boundary and bounced. No, then, the curse was still in effect. By why, then, why wasn’t it moving her? She wasn’t hurting for money, far from it. Reading for some many people for so many years had left her with a very full purse.

Back in town, she began helping young women with small children, offering to watch the babes in arms to their mothers could rest; using her books, of which she had collected a fair few, to teach the elder children their letters and how to read and write. She offer help with the harvests and came to the aid of the dairyman when his daughter took ill and he was short of hands to milk. She gave aid to the miller, magically repairing a wagon wheel so he could bring his fresh milled flour to the town market. She even helped the taverner, serving drinks a night or two a week when his main assistant came up with child and got married.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad life, and she found herself not only tolerated (for some villages had very much not wanted to do that) but welcomed and embraced. She was invited to marriages and celebrations of births. She joined in the dancing at the harvest fair and was included in the Mid-winter feast. In short, she was made one of them. If the curse deigned to leave her here, she thought she would be fairly well content.

Then, one evening, after she had done a rare reading for a passing tinker who shared with her news that the cursed had been returned over year ago, seeming no older, only to disappear again taking more folk with them, she had been puttering around her room, putting away the new book she had bought and the cloth for new small clothes. She had stripped down to her shift, planning to hot launder the old green wool gown she had worn. Suddenly, the air shifted.

Del’s head came up as she heard the chimes in the front room tinkle as they often did when she read. But there was no one there, just her alone. She took a step forward when the blast of magic slammed into her from all sides, spinning her around and around. She felt her feet leave the ground and saw the edge of the table out of the corner of her eye seconds before her head struck it.

Then Adelphia of Caletta, called in this village Delcinia, felt into the black and saw nothing at all.


	12. The Treasure Chest of Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The home should be the treasure chest of living.- Le Corbusier
> 
> In which Killian and Emma have to leave home to find it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my characters (well, most of them). Just borrowing.
> 
> Thank you for the kudos and the feedback.

If he lived to be one thousand years old, he would never, never come to like jumping through portals. It made him all the more sure that “Mad Hatter” was an absolutely correct sobriquet for Jefferson. He landed hard on the rocky ground, forcing the air from his lungs with an oomph.

Killian looked over quickly, searching for Emma. He breathed a quick sigh of relief to see her unharmed, if deeply unhappy. Looking around, he realized what he was seeing. This world looked as it did so often in his travels, deep and dense and full of foliage.

“It looks like were back in the Enchanted Forest.” He brushed the dirt off his pants.

“Right, got that,” Emma snapped.

He sighed to himself. “Only question is when.” He looked over at her again to find her attention rapt on something in front of her. “Swan?”

“I have a pretty good idea.” Because there, starring out at them from a tree trunk, was a fairly good likeness of her mother’s face.

Bloody hell.

****

Sometimes, he really hated that bloody book. Because while it did at least give them an idea of what the time line was supposed to be, it also gave them, perhaps, a little too much information. For example, if Emma hadn’t known that her mother would be up that tree, waiting to rob her father, she would never have leaned forward, the branch would never have snapped, Snow White would never have been startled…

So, now, they were making their way, with all deliberate speed, to the Dark One’s castle. The Dark One, the Crocodile, who still wanted to kill him. And if he was honest, the feeling remained mutual.

Emma was quiet, and that was another reason he hated the book so much. While Emma believed the book, that her parents were her parents, and that they were in fact Snow White and her charming Prince, that her friend Ruby was both the wolf and Red Riding Hood, she didn’t see herself there. This wasn’t her world, not truly, and she couldn’t connect her own story to these pages.

Even now, watching her make her way through the forest, it killed him that she couldn’t see how brave and magical and special she really was. He had faith that if anyone could right the timeline, could get them back home, it was her.

****

It was oddly disconcerting to watch himself, the man he had been 30 years ago, before the curse and Cora, before Swan had pulled him out of the pile of bodies in that wrecked village. It…hurt, to be honest. He wasn’t a perfect man now, not by any means. He may not even be a truly good man, but Emma made him want to try, to fight to be one, to try to find his way back to that your lieutenant all those years ago.

He hadn’t been lying when he warned her. She didn’t know that man, not at all.

He was relieved to slip out and go take care of business with Snow, to set her back on course to steal the Prince’s ring. Even if it felt wrong, pretending to be that same selfish pirate he had been.

When Snow had gone and Emma had found him in his quarters, he had almost panicked. They needed to get there as quickly…and too late.

Watching Emma distract his past self…kiss his past self. Jealousy reared, and the next thing he knew, he was standing over his own unconscious form, his hand smarting fiercely and Emma looking at him with this mixture of confusion and just a little bit of awe.

“He’ll blame it on the rum,” he said, as they hurried off the ship.

****

She was a vision. The red was a far more vibrant color than anyone else was wearing, and while he knew the Crocodile made them non-descript and unrecognizable, in his eyes she is the most breathtaking thing in the room. And the look on her face when she saw the dancing, when he took her hand and led her to the floor.

“There’s only one rule,” he said, smiling at her. “Pick a partner who knows what he’s doing.”

And suddenly, he was that young lieutenant again, learning to waltz, the better to have good form at social parties. The smile on her face made his heart ache, and he thought, if nothing else, he could live happy frozen in this moment.

So of course, in would walk Regina. And then the slightly bungled burglary and being forced to watch as the black knights took Emma away.

He sighed, heavily. It never could be easy.

****

There was nothing he could do. Snow White was about to die, and then Emma. Gods, Emma. He grabbed her, pulled her close. He would hold her as long as he could, until…

After, when they escaped, his mind in a million directions, but mostly focused on comforting her. He found himself speaking of Liam to her, for the first time, reminding her that she had to live in the here and now.

It was only when they realized that Snow couldn’t be dead, or Emma would have disappeared. And then she was there, the blue fairy having restored her, and Emma was hugging her. And then he could see her face, devastated.

He raised a hand to wipe away her tears. “Looks like we’re back on track, love.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, her voice raw.

****

Rumplestiltskin had, of course, double crossed them, locking them in his vault. He could feel the fear and the panic radiating from her, could hear it in her admonishment when he picked up that urn. Part of him wanted to be gentle and comforting with her, but he knew that wasn’t what she needed from him. Not right now.

So he pushed her, about her magic, about what she wanted, what she needed. And it broke his heart when she spoke of Neal, until he realized that what she was saying was what he had hoped to hear for so long. That her family, that town was her home. That she wasn’t going to leave it again, if they ever got back.

And then the wand was glowing, and she had reopened the portal, and again, he hated portals, hated them.

Landing with the woman, he had been relieved when she had landed next to them. He didn’t even really mind that Emma left him to get their tag along situated.

****

When they had arrived at Granny’s, he had settled Marian at the counter and had gotten her food and a drink, then slipped back outside. Even now, after all this time, he felt…not unwelcome, but unsure of his place. Emma was with her parents, looking through the book intently, and much like the hospital, he didn’t feel like it was his place to intrude.

Sitting out on the patio, he closed his eyes and listened to the distant sound of the sea. He never once regretted the choice he made to get back to this realm, back to his Swan. But their brief visit to the Jolly on their trip to the past tugged at heart, making him homesick for the rock of the ocean beneath his feet and the smell of clean salt air.

When she came to him, a while later, to offer her thanks, the last thing he imagined was that she would ask him how he had done it, how he had gotten to her. And because he could deny her nothing, he told her, trying to sound as light and carefree as possible. He wouldn’t have her pity or have her feel beholden. Even if she never loved him, he was content to stay by her side and love her in any way he could.

“You traded your ship for me?” she asked, her voice only slightly more than a whisper.

There was nothing glib to say, nowhere to hide from the intensity of her stare. “Aye.”

Her eyes stared into his for a moment more, and what he saw wasn’t pity, and it wasn’t someone beholden. What he saw was faith and trust and hope. He stopped breathing as she leaned in, and then her lips with soft upon his.

This wasn’t their kiss back in that godsforsaken jungle. That had been all heat and reaction and a battle for dominance (she had bested him, truly). This was a different thing entirely, soft and honest, and passionate. His hand reached, cupping her head, her hair a fall of gold through his fingers, and he could hear that sing song voice of that seer, so many many years ago.

“You will not know it immediately, but it shall be revealed to you in a fall of bright gold.” As her fingers came up, running through his hair, her lips parting for him, he remembered the beanstalk and the cell, her exultation to him that he could be a part of something, his terror when she nearly drowned on the way to Neverland. That kiss in the jungle, and his words in the Echo Cave, her voice when she told him ‘Good’ at the town line, and the look in her eyes when he had tried kissing her in New York.

The ache in his heart in that last year and the pain of her saying she had someone she loved in her false life. Neal and all the complexities of his emotions for him, and her constantly pushing him away. Her declaration of lost trust and his belief that she should have sacrificed him for her magic. All their time in the past, and the vulnerability she had shown him, and then her words of family and home. Home. “The strength of this home shall redeem you.”

They broke apart for a second, but not far, breathing softly with their foreheads pressed together, their noses touching, being able to touch her, his bright, beautiful swan. His fingers brushed her cheek before coming back to her hair as she leaned into him again. Home.


	13. Sigh no more...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone comes together, and true love get's called upon one more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearly there. Thank you for reading, and thanks to Adam and Eddy for the universe.

If Ruby had been suffering a head cold, the woman might have been a corpse. The girl was out for a run in her human form, on the trails in the woods near the troll bridge. Bundled up against the weird, unseasonably cold weather, she felt slow that morning. A sudden shift of the wind brought the unmistakable smell of blood, and she skidded to a halt and looked down at the bottom ravine.

Lying half in the water, her face hidden on the bank, was the body of a woman in a white shift, the kind they had worn in the enchanted realms. Ruby reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, hitting the speed dial. “Emma? I need you at the troll bridge. Bring the paramedics.”

Emma had arrived within fifteen minutes, with David and Killian in tow, and ahead of the paramedics. The call had reached her at a family breakfast with Mary Margaret and the baby, Henry, and Regina and Robin and Roland. She and David had risen to answer the call, and Killian just came with her, with no further thought. It was terribly comforting.

“She’s down there,” Ruby said, pointing. Emma leaned over the side and saw the figure.

“Did you check her?” Emma asked, reaching into trunk of the Volkswagen and pulling out a blanket and a first aid kit.

“And get shoved over the town line like Belle? Or turned into a flying monkey? Or whatever the next person throws at us?” Ruby looked at her. “Not without back up. But I am pretty sure she doesn’t smell like a corpse.”

Emma nodded, because the wolf had a point. She started down the trail of the incline with the others following her. Reaching the bottom, she approached the body slowly, waiting for her to spring up. David stood behind her and covered her with a gun. When she didn’t, she reached out two fingers and checked her neck. “She’s alive, but her pulse is slow and her breathing is shallow. And she’s freezing.   Help me get her out of the water.”

David holstered the sidearm and moved, and together he and Emma carefully pulled the woman up the bank until her lower body was on dry land. Emma supported her head while David carefully rolled her over.   
  
Killian, standing aside with the blanket, let out a gasp. “Bloody hell.”

Emma looked up to see the blood drain from his face. “What’s the matter?”

“I know this lass,” he said, clearly shaken. “Her name’s Delphine.”

Emma’s eyebrow rose, as if to say, oh, really?

“Not like that, love,” he said. He bent down and covered the unconscious woman with the blanket, fingering the bracelet at her wrist, and brushing the wet, muddy hair off her face. He looked up. “Not long after Liam…after I lost him, I put into port in a place called Speranza Perduta. And there was a seer there, rumored to be very powerful.”

“She’s a seer?” David said. It was his turn to look shocked. “This woman.”

“Aye,” Killian said. “But that was over 300 years ago. She…she can’t still live.”

“We’ve traveled through time. You’re 300 years old and then some,” Emma said. “What’s the big surprise?”

“She wasn’t in Neverland,” he replied. Killian looked up the hill at the ambulance pulling in by Emma’s car. “I’ll lead them down.”

“Delphine,” David murmured. Emma looked up at him. “Can it really be?”

“What, was she someone you dated before mom?” Emma asked.

Her father shook himself and looked at her. “What? No. But Kay…you’ve met Kay, Chief Kevin down at the fire station.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“I think…look, someone should go with her in the ambulance. I want to be sure before I get his hopes up.” David looked up the hill, where Killian and Ruby were helping the paramedics, who had brought a backboard, carry equipment down. “I need to borrow Killian, since he knows her. If I am right, we’ll meet you at the hospital soon.”

Emma looked at him, but shrugged as the paramedics took over. She handed David her keys, and watched as he said a quick word to Killian. Then two men headed back up the trail, as Emma followed the paramedics, who, in another life, had been jugglers at a king’s court. Her life was seriously weird.

****

David pulled up outside the fire house, glad to see the engine in the garage. He sat for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to break the news.

“You all right, mate?” Killian asked. The prince had forgotten for a moment the man was there. Normally always ready with a glib joke or running, light conversation, the pirate had been surprisingly subdued on the drive.

“She was under a curse,” he said. “The woman you called Delphine. It’s why she’s still alive. She crossed a powerful wizard, and he cursed her to be un-aging until someone believed her prophecy and chose the better fate.”

Killian found his hand dropping into his pocket to worry the little brass swan. He carried it almost unconsciously now that things were good. “So what are we doing here?”

David pointed to the fire house, and to the man sitting on the picnic table off to the side of it, heavy jacket emblazoned “SFD”, starring off towards the ocean. “His name is Kay. Well, Caius, but he went by Cai, and we couldn’t pronounce it then… Anyway, he loved her. She defied the sorcerer for him and to save their kingdom, and he loved her, and after she was cursed and whisked away, he made a deal. Got the man to curse him too.”

“Good man.” David looked at the man next to him, the one who had risked much to find his own daughter, to get back to her.

“We didn’t know, when we met him. I didn’t know until just before the first curse, Regina’s curse.” The prince stopped for a moment. “He had been searching for 900 years. And when Emma broke the first curse, he came to check on Snow and me, and then he scoured the town for her. And she wasn’t here. I sat up with him drinking, that night. Because he assumed he would never see her again.”

Jones took a moment to imagine three times his own every long, long lifetime, without Emma. Trying and failing again and again to find her. “So, what are we waiting for?”

“I never met his Del,” David said. “If I am wrong and it’s not her? Or I’m right, but whatever has happened kills her? He’s a friend.”

“If it was Snow, wouldn’t you want to know?” Killian looked at him, soberly, and David knew he was imagining his daughter. “If his lady is Delphine, my description of her should confirm it.”

They got out of the car and headed to the man on the bench. He heard them coming and turned, hopping down to meet them. “Your Highness! And Captain Jones, I presume.”

Killian looked at the young face with the careworn eyes, and felt a kinship with the man. “Aye, call me Killian.”

“I’m Kay. Or Cai. Or Kevin. Well, take your pick.” He turned to Charming. “What can I do for you, Sire?”

“Kay, Killian met someone, a long time ago, in the Enchanted Realms. I want him to describe them and see if they sound familiar.” The prince nodded to the reformed pirate. Jones found himself taking a deep breath.

“She looked maybe twenty three or twenty four. Much shorter than you, but a bit taller than Snow White,” Killian said. Almost immediately, Kay’s hands clenched. “Her hair was dark, but with a red cast, and curly. Her skin was lightly bronzed, like she had spent time in the sun. Her bracelet matched her eyes…”

“Like the violet in the sky at dawn over the sea,” Caius finished. “Gods, where did you see her? When?”

“I met her in a sea town called Speranza Perduta, over 300 years ago.” As he answered, he saw the brief flicker of hope fade.

“Del,” the man breathed. Then shook himself. “Thank you, for telling me. I had started to wonder if I was crazy, it’s been so long since I spoke to someone who knew her, remembered her.”

“Kay,” David said firmly. “Del’s here. We found her out by the troll bridge this morning.   Emma is taking her to the hospital.”

“Is she…”

“She was alive when we left,” the prince said. The other man swayed on his feet, and Killian found himself reaching out to steady him. “Come on, we’ll drive you over.”

Together, the three of them hurried to the car.

****

Emma sat in the chair next to the woman’s bed, reading an old magazine article on juice fasts, when Dr. Whale came into the room. “How is she?” she asked, quietly.

He motioned for her to step out in the hall. “If Ruby hadn’t found her, she’d be dead.” She heard the note of pride in the man’s voice, and wondered again what it was about this town that made such strange bedfellows. Snow White’s daughter and Captain Hook. And, apparently, Dr. Frankenstein and Little Red Riding Wolf. “We’re giving her warm saline to bring her core temperature back up; and antibiotics as a precaution. The big concern is that goose egg on her head. I would have expected her to wake up by now, but head trauma’s tricky. We should know in a few hours.”

“Thanks, Victor.” She smiled at him, and noted how pleased he seemed to be. “Good work.”

“Do we know who she is?” he asked. “For the chart?”

“Killian called her Delphine,” she said, and saw his eyebrow raise. “He ran across her in a previous life. But there is apparently more to it.”

“She can be Jane Doe, for now.” Whale left her and headed off to finish rounds. Emma was about to head back in when she caught site of her father and the love of her life, steering a dazed looking man between them down the hall. She recognized the man she knew to be Kevin Harper, the young fire chief, who was also Sir Kay, head of her parent’s castle guard before the curse. So weird, this life.

“Emma,” David said. “How is she?”

“Whale says she’s lucky, but it looks like she took a blow to the head, and she hasn’t woken up yet.” She saw Kevin visibly flinch. “Do you want to see her?”

“Please,” he whispered. She reached out for his arm and guided him to the room.

The woman lay in the hospital bed, looking small and pale under her tan, with an IV in her hand. The nurses had taken the wrecked shift and dressed her in a hospital gown, and had cleaned the mud from her face and hair. Near her scalp, the livid knot showed the point of Whale’s concern. Emma picked up a small plastic bag and handed it to him. “She was wearing this, when they brought her in. Dr. Whale was careful to remove it. He said it looked old.”

He fingered the light violet beads and the bronze through the plastic, then made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sob. David appeared and put his arms around the man. Emma stepped out to give him some space.

“It must be hard to believe she’s real,” Killian said, a touch of awe in his voice.

“Why?” Emma asked, watching through the window of the room.

“Because he’s waited three times my lifetime to see her again.” His good hand found hers and squeezed it. “I hate to say it, Swan, but they may have even your parents beat.”

“As long as she wakes up,” she said, quietly.

“Have a little faith, love,” Killian said. “After all, this realm needs more happy endings.”

****

Cai had been touched by the concern of Prince …David, and his family. Once he had recovered, he had sat down at Del’s side and taken her free hand, rubbing the top with his thumb like he had when she was scared and they were children. Emma and the pirate had gone, but David had stayed in the waiting area outside the ICU, reading from a book. After a while, Mary Margaret had arrived with the baby and joined him, checking on him periodically. It was Mary Margaret who made him get up and walk a bit, get some coffee, wash his face.

Later, Emma had returned with Jones and her son, and had taken over while the Nolans had taken the baby home. Emma had brought him dinner from Granny’s, and while he ate, Henry had sat with him and asked him questions about where Cai and Del had come from, and what had it been like to be a soldier.

Dr. Whale had come back to check, and while he had been pleased with the improvements in body temperature and her lab work, he was concerned. “Neurologically, nothing indicates a reason she shouldn’t be waking up. I’m sorry, we just have to wait and see.”

He sat there quietly after that, until the Queen arrived. Kay had been one of the few in town to immediately support the Royal family in their acceptance of Regina as a changed woman. After all, he had spent centuries observing the human condition, and if he didn’t believe people could change their fate, he could never have hoped Del could break the curse.

The woman stuck her head into the room; there to get Henry for the night. The boy wished him well and walked over to say goodnight to the sheriff and the sea captain. Regina stopped in the doorway and then looked from Cai to the woman in the bed. “What’s her real name?”

“Adelphia, your Majesty,” he answered. “Del, I called her.”

“And have you kissed her yet, Caius?”

The question took him aback. She wasn’t conscious, so surely he should wait until she was and make sure that after all this time she still wanted him.

“At the risk of pointing out the obvious,” Regina said, somewhat sadly, “True Love’s Kiss has cured more incurable ailments and solved more unsolvable problems than I was ever likely to credit it with, back in the Enchanted Forest. It might be worth a go.”

He must have looked dumbstruck, because she patted him on the shoulder and then turned. “Come on, Henry,” she said. “Time to go home.”

Cai turned back to the room, and his eyes lit on the bracelet. Opening the little bag, he took it out and carefully lifted her hand, the one without an IV, and placed it back on her wrist. His hand came up, and he stroked the side of her cheek. “Del,” he said, leaning in. “If you can hear me, please come back.”

Then he leaned in and kissed her. It was soft, and gentle, and his eyes drifted shut, and 900 years faded away to a boy and a girl, kissing on the beach for the first time. A force like a small wave rocked him as a light purple color flashed before his eyes.

In the hall, Emma and Killian smiled as the small wave of magic rolled out from the room. It wasn’t quite the shock waves they had seen recently, but this was a very personal curse breaking. Emma slipped away to go fetch Dr. Whale.

In the parking lot, Regina smiled knowingly. Her eyes met Henry’s and they laughed.

In their loft across town, Snow and Charming looked up from where they watched the baby sleeping as the glass unicorns of the mobile over the crib tinkled, and their hands found each other.

Cai pulled back and looked down to find a pair of tired violet eyes looking at him. “Am I dead?” she asked, softly.

“No, Del,” he whispered.

“But you died. Lifetimes ago,” she said, disbelief in her voice. She reached out for him, whimpering as the IV pulled against her hand. He took hers carefully.

“I struck a deal with Agathan, to curse me to try to find you,” he said. Her eyes filled with tears. “You did it, Del. You broke the curse.”

“Finally,” she whispered, and he leaned down and kissed her again. This time, when he pulled back, she winced, her free hand coming up to the knot on her head. “What realm is this?”

“They call it the land without magic, although that’s not quite true anymore.” Just then, Whale returned. “This man is a healer here; he needs to check you over.”

Whale made quick work of it, and smiled at them both, then carefully removed the IV from her hand. “Everything seems fine, now,” he said. “I want to keep you overnight for observation, to be safe. But he can take you home tomorrow.”

Del nodded. “Thank you.” Then a yawn overtook her.

Cai kissed her cheek. “Get some rest. I need to talk to a friend outside, but I will be back.”

He and Whale stepped out to see Emma and Killian. Whale shook hands with him. “I’m glad it worked out. If you’d like, I can have a nurse put a cot in there, so you can stay with her.”

“Please,” Cai said. Whale nodded and then left. He turned to Emma and Hook. “Thank you. I had thought…I assumed when she wasn’t here after the first curse, that I wouldn’t ever see her again. So, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, mate,” Killian said. Emma nodded.

“We’ll come by in the morning. Mary Margaret and I will bring you some clothing for her.” She squeezed Cai’s hand. “Have a good night.”

They left, and he returned to his place by her bed. She had fallen asleep, but this time, her face looked peaceful, and her hand squeezed his when he took it. For the first time in a long time, Kevin Harper, born Caius almost a millennia before, really smiled.


	14. A little help from my friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our long separated lovers navigate life after curse...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter, and we are done.
> 
> Thank you for your encouragement and for reading.

True to their word, Emma and Mary Margaret arrived in the morning with two bags of clothing, undergarments and a combination of skirts and tops with a few dresses and some nightgowns. “Pants may be odd, until she’s been here for a little while,” Snow confided.

The two women offered to help her dress, so Cai stepped outside. A short time later, Del was clothed in a simple green dress with a purple sweater over it, and cream tights. Snow had braided her hair loosely, and she wore a pair of simple brown boots on her feet. Mary Margaret took her leave so she could get home to the baby.

Dr. Whale discharged them, and Emma met them with her car. Del seemed to find the whole experience quizzical, but she didn’t seem terribly shocked. The sheriff assumed that was what came of being a seer. Following Cai’s directions, she drove them across town to a small, simple shingle side cottage with a neat yard, near to the fire station.

Cai helped her from the car and led up the walk, with Emma following behind with the bags of clothing. Cai opened the door, and watched as Del walked in. Emma handed him the bags. “Our family is going to Granny’s tonight for dinner at 7. I know David and Mary Margaret would love it if you joined us. If Del is up to it.”

“Thank you, Emma. I’ll call David and let him know,” he said. The Sheriff took her leave.

In the house, Del stood quietly, running her hand over a small framed picture of Cai as Kevin, in his fire uniform. From the hall, the tick of the clock he had the false memory of a fictional grandfather handing down echoed.

He wasn’t sure quite what to say to her. What her life had been like, what she might want of him now. True, the kiss in the hospital seemed to be one of true love, but there were other kinds of love that could apply. Look at Emma and Henry.

The last time they had been together, they had been under an impending sense of doom, and it was heat and passion and immediacy. Now they were, for the moment, safe. Should he make her something to eat? Would she want to be…what they had once planned for?

“Caius, you are thinking very loudly,” she said. He looked up to find her smiling at him. His heart stuttered at that smile, the one she had given him when he put that bracelet on her wrist, ages ago.

“This must all be strange to you,” he said, moving over and taking her hand. He led her into the small living room and sat on the couch. She sat beside him, and he felt his breath catch when she leaned into him.

“I spent lifetimes under a curse that would pick me up and deposit me in a new place frequently,” she said. “I assume to make it impossible for you to find me. This place is different, but not completely out of the ordinary.”

He sat quietly for a minute. Finally, awkwardly he said, “So, the house has two bedrooms. I can set up the guestroom for you, if you want me to.”

Del went still, and then pulled away sharply. “Oh,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. She had been actively shielding from reading people. “I…misunderstood. I thought…you wanted me…I’m sorry. I can find somewhere else to go.” She moved to stand, and he could see that she was shaking.

“NO.” He thought his heart was going to stop as he reached out, clutching her hand. “Del, no, please. Don’t go. I…I didn’t know if you still wanted me, if there had been someone else. Since you thought I was dead.”

“Not for me, no,” she said softly, sitting back down. “When you were cursed to forget?”

“No,” he whispered. “Even when I didn’t remember you, Del, I never wanted anyone else. It was always you.”

She let out the breath she hadn’t known she had been holding. She turned to look at him, and her hand came up to caress his face, one finger tracing the scar on his cheek. Suddenly, it was like a wall had come crashing down and he was holding her, his lips pressed against hers, and she felt like she was spiraling out of herself.

Her mouth opened to him, and then she could taste him, feel him. Only when they broke apart gasping did a giggle bubble up in her chest. He looked at her, oddly. “You said something, I think, about a bed.”

He paused, and looked into her eyes, suddenly hesitant and so young. They had been so very young, once. “Del, your head. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Cai,” she whispered. He shuddered at her voice, and the naked need in it. “I’m not that fragile. Please.”

No more words then. He stood, and moved with speed and grace that belied his height and build.   He cradled her in his arms, and he had them up the stairs and pushed into a room, and she realized how much she had longed for this, how well they fit. Her head tucked into his neck, his warmth flowing into her.

A dresser stood against the wall, and a large bed took most of the rest of the room. Out the windows, she could see the bay, and she remembered two children, combing the beach for shells and driftwood.

Cai laid her down on the soft, blue comforter then stood, reaching down and undoing his belt, before he pulled his shirt off. His skin, light next to hers, but still tanned, seemed to glow in the mid-morning light.

Again, she giggled softly. “So, these clothes. I may need some help…”

This time he laughed, and she hadn’t heard that sound in so long. She watched as he knelt at the foot of the bed, and carefully unlaced her boots, pulling them from her feet. Reaching up, he found her tights and rolled them down and off. Then he stood and pulled her up, slipping the sweater off her shoulders and tossing it over onto the chair near the window.

Her own hands came up and ran lightly over his skin, eliciting a gasp. The fingers of her right hand lingered over the scar he had that day in the sea cave. ‘An arrow’, her mind told her. His hands against her back shook a little as he found the strange little device that closed the opening of the dress and drew it down. The fabric slid and pooled around her feet.

“Gods, Adelphia, you are so very, very beautiful.” His eyes were drinking her in, looking over the simple white undergarments that Mary Margaret had brought for her. “I dreamed about you, every night.”

She pressed her lips to his, and then he was lifting her and laying her down again. His own clothes disappeared and he was beside her, his hands touching her everywhere. It’s slower than the first time, without the fear of discovery and death looming. His fingers undid the clasps on her bra and pulled it off of her, tossing it aside. When his lips kissed down her neck to the swell of her breast, she threaded her fingers through his hair and let her eyes slide shut. Her mind reached out, not really reading him, just connecting.

Love, desire, need washed over her, and she moaned softly, her body responding to him. Cai may not have loved another in the countless years of their curses, but he had read books, and during his years trapped under the first Storybrooke curse, there had been television and movies. Knowledge had enhanced the raw instinct he had before.

He had imagined her, like this, for years. The way her skin would feel against his fingers again. How her body would respond to his touch, arching to him. The scent of her skin, clean and warm. The taste of her lips, and the sounds she would make. It had haunted his dreams at night, even when he hadn’t remembered _her_ , hadn’t known her name.

This had been better, so much better. He had taken his time, explored her until she was panting and mewling, whispering his name, his real name. “Caius, please, I need…please, Cai.” When he had finally moved between her legs and pushed into her, it had felt like coming home.

“Del,” he breathed. “Gods.” They moved together, time slowing and expanding, then speeding up, and then they were tumbling down, down, down together.

He held her softly to him, fingers playing with her hair where it had run free of its braid. Cai felt like he could be happy, just like this, forever. He felt Del’s lips, worrying his neck. “You are insatiable, woman.”

She laughed, and it was husky and low, like the smokey scotch he got from his men every year at Christmas. “I’ve waited nine hundred years for you,” she said, her warm breath against his ear. “I might be a little needy.”

The second time was even slower, and she had been more in control of herself, showing that she too had read some interesting books in their years apart.

After, they lay together in a tangle, and he was considering whether he ever wished to leave the room when her stomach grumbled. “Sorry,” she chuckled. It had been a long time since breakfast at the hospital. And since he ate most of his meals at the station, he hadn’t done much grocery shopping lately.

“No, I’m hungry too,” he said. Thinking about it, he considered his options. “Emma invited us to join her family to eat. But if you aren’t up to being around people, we could order something delivered. I can do some grocery shopping tomorrow.”

She stretched beside him, almost like a cat. “No, it’s all right. This is our home now; I should get to know people.”

He smiled and rose, grabbing his robe and walking back downstairs to grab her bags of clothing. Soon, he had helped her dress with fresh panties and her bra. She picked up her purple dress and slipped back into it, letting him zip her up. She took the hair brush he offered and worked to unsnarl her hair; watched him as he took the other clothes out of the bags, and laid them out on the bed.

Cai moved to the dresser first, shifting things from a few drawers into others to create a clear space, then methodically folding her underthings and nightgowns, putting them away. He moved to the closet, and shifted more clothes. Taking hangers, he hung up the dresses and skirts and blouses in a careful neat row.

Soon, they had both dressed and walked downstairs. He led her out back through the kitchen to the garage where his car was. Helping her into the passenger seat, he showed her how to buckle her seat belt, and then moved around to the driver’s side.

As he drove through town, he pointed out various places. The fire station where he worked. The harbor. The city library. Town hall. Pulling up outside of Granny’s, he parked and looked at her. Del’s face was the picture of open acceptance. A strange new world, perhaps, but she wasn’t afraid of it.

He helped her out of the car and headed into Granny’s. As people turned, conversation dipped. Newcomers in Storybrooke were generally treated with pause. People remembered the upheaval of Emma’s arrival, and Greg, Tamara. But the sight of her hand held tightly by the Chief of the Fire Department settled people, and the noise level returned to normal.

“Kay!” Snow called. In one corner, tables had been pushed together, and she sat next to the highchair holding her baby. David sat next to her, and on his other side, the pirate Killian Jones lounged, his arm around Emma’s shoulders. Henry sat next to the Sheriff. David stood, and moved to greet them.

“Adelphia,” he said, smiling. “Welcome. We’re so glad you could join us.”

She returned his smile. “Thank you, your Highness. Please, call me Del.”

“David, please.” He shook Cai’s hand and then turned back towards the table.

She followed him, and let Cai pull out a chair for her. Henry handed her one of the menus, which she read over for a moment, then looked up with a sheepish grin.

“I’m afraid none of this sounds familiar to me,” she said. Cai had been telling her about the people they were likely to encounter. “Henry, what’s your favorite?”

“Usually, ice cream,” the boy said, smiling. “But my moms prefer me to have some kind of real food before desert. I bet you would like the chicken fingers.”

“Sounds perfect,” she said, warmly. Next to her, she felt Cai smiling at her. She glanced around the table, and found the reformed pirate at Emma’s side regarding her with parts interest and trepidation. “Captain Jones, it’s been a long time.”

“Indeed.” He looked sheepish, and she made a mental note to speak to him later, more privately.

Before long, their orders were taken and then delivered, and Del found she did, indeed, like chicken fingers, and that Ranch dressing was a revelation. She also laughed at the way Cai would steal a potato piece…fry?...when she wasn’t looking. Conversation ebbed and flowed around the table, and it was nice.

“So,” Henry asked, as they were finishing the main course, “Are you really seer?”

“Henry,” Emma jumped in, looking embarrassed. “I thought we talked about not asking prying questions.”

“It’s all right.” Del smiled at them both. “I am, yes.”

“So can you read my mind?” Henry asked, leaning forward, clearly intrigued.

“Henry,” Emma said in a warning tone. Cai tried to hide a chuckle, and Jones snorted into  
his drink.

This time, she actually laughed. “Not…exactly. Usually I need to be focusing, deeply and trying. When I read someone, I try to take what they ask me and use it to guide what the sight show me. Sometimes it’s clear, sometimes it’s more… symbolic. Otherwise, I try to actively not see things.”

Henry seemed to think about that for a moment. “Cool.” Then he turned his attention back to his handheld game.

Snow White seemed to be regarding her with interest. “So, do you still have your powers, in this realm?” she asked softly.

Cai’s hand moved to her knee and squeezed gently, reassuring her.  “I haven’t tried to do a formal reading, but with Cai, if I touched him, I could feel his emotions. And I knew things he hasn’t actually told me.”

“Interesting,” the woman said, and it was a thousand other people, in a hundred life times, watching her.

Just then, Ruby approached and offered dessert. She let Cai order for her, watching as Emma and Snow continued to look at her appraisingly.

“So, is the sight your only power?” Emma asked. Henry looked up at them.

“I thought we weren’t prying,” the boy said astutely. David chuckled as Emma and Snow both blushed. Cai had told her about the wicked witch, and the town’s previous struggles. She understood the concern.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “Henry’s right.”

“I don’t mind.” Just then, Ruby set a milk shake down in front of her, and she picked it up, taking an experimental sip. She made a noise of happiness, and then set it back down. “At one point, I met a village wise woman. It was the longest I was anywhere, almost three years. She taught me small magic, but I don’t think I have any great aptitude.”

Cai was looking at her now, intrigued.

“Show us?” Henry asked.

She smiled and looked around, noticing a bottle of something on an empty table across the room. She concentrated on it and focused as Elasit had taught her ages ago. In a blink, the red bottle was in her hand.

Emma’s face showed surprise. The move reminded her of her own attempts to move her cocoa around the diner. “Interesting.”

Del shrugged. “Parlor tricks, really.” Just then, the baby prince started to fuss and people seemed to realize how late it was. Del smiled as Cai rose and got her a to-go cup for her shake, then stood to join him. “Thank you, this has been a lovely evening.”

“We’re pleased you joined us,” Snow said, rising and giving her a quick hug. “Please, let us know if you need anything.”

Saying goodnight, she and Cai walked hand in hand to the car, and headed home.


	15. Epilogue: Life or something like it...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we end out tale...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Adam and Eddy, this has been a very fun ride.

The next day, Cai had needed to go into the station. “I don’t want to leave you, but I need to check in, and work up this week’s schedule.”

She had awoken early, and felt bad when he found her sitting wrapped in a blanket on the back porch, starring down the hill at the sea. She felt the panic in his touch, and realized she had worried him.

“I was scarred it was a dream,” he said, his arms holding her tight, his lips pressed against her hairline. “Or a nightmare. I used to have horrible nightmares that the curse would break, only for you to age and die in front of me in minutes.”

She hadn’t tell him that she had wished that would be the end of her curse, back when she had believed he was long dead and she had lived lifetimes without him.

They had gone back inside and he had shown her how to work the stove and oven while making a breakfast of tea, eggs, and toast. After, he had pulled taken a map of Storybrooke out a drawer, and his credit card and explained to her how to use it. “If you want anything, just buy it. If anyone asks about you using it, have them call me at the station. I’ll speak to the bank about getting one for you.”

She had kissed him good-bye, and then gone upstairs to consider clothing. It was cool outside, but the promise of spring was in the air. She ran her hands over the clothes that Snow and Emma had brought her, feeling textures before choosing a brown skirt and a pale pink blouse. She had become attached to the purple sweater from the day before, and pulled it on over the top.

She placed the spare key to the house, the map, and the credit card in the simple purse that had been with the clothes, and locking the door, headed out to explore the town.

By lunch time, she was ravenous, having walked around a good chunk of town. So far, her big purchases had been a simple canvas tote to put her shopping into, and some bath products. She loved Cai, and loved how his soap smelled on him, but found herself missing the simple scents she wore in the Enchanted Realms. The shop girl had smiled knowingly and showed her to products that she found evoked the old world.

Sitting down at the counter in Granny’s, she felt warmed by Ruby’s easy grin. “Hey, new girl,” the pretty waitress said. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Hot tea?” she said. Ruby smiled and nodded. “With honey, please.” The woman handed her a menu and moved away, chatting easily with other customers as she went. A few minutes later, she returned with a cup of tea and a small honey pot, setting them down in front of her.

“What do you want to eat?” Del had looked at the menu, but other than knowing now what chicken fingers were, she still felt pretty clueless.

“Why don’t you surprise me?” she said. Ruby laughed, and took the plastic covered booklet from her.

“That’s awfully brave, lass,” a familiar voice said, and she turned to find a certain pirate sliding into the seat next to her.

“Captain,” she said, and smiled. “It’s lovely to see you again. Surprising, though.”

“Thought me long dead?” he asked. He nodded at Ruby, who set a cup of coffee down in front of him. “The feeling is rather mutual.”

She glanced down at his hook, resting on the counter, as she stirred honey into her tea, and then looked back up at him. “I can see it wasn’t an easy road, and I am sorry for that. But you look happy.” And he did, his blue eyes lacking some of the grief and rage she had seen in him before.

He nodded and sipped his own drink, thinking. “You told me as much, back in that hell hole of a town.” He paused as Ruby came back and he ordered something called a lobster roll. “Do you remember that?”

Del was quiet for a long moment, seeming intent on her tea, before she looked back up at him. “I do,” she said. “I remember almost every reading I’ve ever done. Yours was one of the few that gave me hope.”

Just then, Ruby returned and set two plates down, one for each of them, with matching sandwiches and fries. Jones was looking at her with a look of astonishment. “Seeing what you saw for me gave you hope?!”

“There are two kinds of futures that a seer can witness, when reading.” She paused and took a bite of the sandwich. It was tasty, though the texture of it was odd. “What shall be, and what could be. Most of the time, we see what shall be. And we can warn people until we are blue in the face, but its immutable. Only rarely do we actually see the future that may be, where we can help someone make a choice.”

The pirate considered this, watching her take another bite of her sandwich, then her fries. “So, when you read for me, it wasn’t all rigid fate.”

“Some of it was. The past is always clearer than the future. May I?” she asked, gesturing to his hand. He looked startled, but nodded, and she rested hers on top of it, closing her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them, he saw storm grey fading back to violet. “You have known much loss, and I am sorry there wasn’t a way to change that. The lady and the boy, the time in the cursed waters, those were not fates to be avoided.”

He felt shaken, and took time to eat some of his sandwich, while she returned to her tea. A companionable silence held between them as they chewed and swallowed. Finally, he felt strong enough to ask. “And Emma?”

“What about her?” she asked. She turned and saw the look on his face, saw the glint of brass in his hand. “Was she immutable? No. She was your choice. If you had sailed away and left her, if you had walked away after Neverland, your fate would be very different.”

“What about this?” he asked. The brass swan he pressed into her hands was warm and smoother than she remembered it.

She considered it. “I didn’t know her name,” she said. “Or even that she was a woman, as opposed to a child, or a friend. The sight of the future is never that clear. When you were leaving, all those years ago, my hand brushed this. Someone had given it to me as payment. And I knew you were meant to have it, though I didn’t know exactly why.”

She pressed the little bird back into his hand and returned to her sandwich. The same companionable silence returned as they focused on their food. When she had finished eating, she signaled Ruby over and handed her the credit card. “Please put Captain Jones’s lunch on my check,” she said.

The reformed pirate looked at her. “You don’t need to do that, lass.”

“I figure a lunch is the least of what I owe you, Captain.” She patted his arm kindly as Ruby brought her the bill and she signed it. “After all, I am rather certain that your choice broke my curse.”

****

Life went on much as it did in Storybrooke. Captain Harper reported for duty to the fire station, though the brooding was replaced with good humor and a love of practical jokes again. Emma Swan and her father kept the Sheriff’s department going. Mayor Mills oversaw the town. Gone was the magical infighting, replaced instead by an eerie sort of calm.

After a few weeks, Regina was interrupted in her contemplation of town plats and budget reports by a knock at the door. “Enter,” she called, and was surprised to find the town’s newest addition.

“Good morning, Mayor Mills,” the woman said, smiling at her. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course.” She gestured to the seating area before the fireplace. “And please, call me Regina.”

The two women sat, and with a flick of her hand, Regina called up two cups of tea. “Thank you,” she seer said.

“Now, what can I do for you?” Regina sat back, sipping her drink carefully and considering the other person on her sofa. She had met seers briefly in her life, but most had been haggard or crones or crazed. She wondered what it was about this one that she had escaped that fate.

“Caius and I…Kevin and I, we’d like to marry.” Not surprising, that. Centuries waiting to be reunited would do that to a person. “We aren’t familiar with the religious customs of this land, and…well, neither of us are really true believers in the faith we were raised in, even if we could find an appropriate cleric. He suggested a civil union would work, and that as Mayor, you were empowered to officiate.”

That was surprising. “You and Sir Kay want me to officiate your wedding?”

“If you don’t mind.” The girl looked amused by her hesitancy. “Kay has seen the changes you have made these last few years. And I’ve only met you in the last few weeks. But you have been kind to us since my curse broke, and it would mean much to us if you would consider it.”

Regina chewed that over for a bit. “Well, to legally marry you in this realm, we’ll need to create an identity for you here. It will be a matter of doctoring the town records, giving you a history. That will take a week or two.” She looked at her desk calendar. “We could do it around the end of the month, assuming that works with what you have planned.”

The young woman (could someone who had lived a near millennia be considered young?) smiled brightly. “We don’t want anything terribly formal. We thought we’d marry on the beach, and just invite people to come, then have food after. There are one or two rituals we’d like to keep, but they aren’t hard or complex.”

“I’ll pencil in the last Saturday of the month, then.” Regina picked up the fountain pen Henry had gotten her for Mother’s Day and made a note. “And you’ll need to think of what first and last name you’ll want. Just call and let my secretary know, and we’ll arrange the identity papers for you.”

“Thank you, Regina,” Del said. “We appreciate your kindness.” Knowing the struggle with her own happy ending, she really did appreciate how kind the Queen was being.

****

The entire town turned out on a bright Saturday afternoon to see Kevin Harper, chief of their fire department, marry the newly christened Adelind Lark. When Mary Margaret and David learned of the wedding, the bandit princess had begged their good Sir Kay and his lady to let them host it as a town celebration.

Regina stood under a canopy at the end of an aisle between two sets of chairs, wearing a dove grey suit. Caius stood to her right, with David and Henry beside him. As music started, Emma and Mary Margaret walked down the aisle in soft grey dresses, each carrying a wreath of jasmine flowers.

Then the tune changed to something lively with pipes and drumming, and the guests rose and turned to see Killian Jones step out to the aisle and offer his arm to the bride.

Del’s hair was a mass of curls and braids, reminiscent of ancient busts in the Maritime Kingdom’s museums. A simple gown of silk chiffon, belted about with a fine gold cord, moved and flowed over her. She carried a bouquet with more jasmine and bougainvillea flowers.

The pirate captain escorted her down the aisle, reaching the front and stopping in front of the Queen. “We are gathered here to witness the marriage of these two people. Who brings the bride to be married?”

“At her request, it is my honor to.” Jones smiled at her and kissed her hand before placing it in Cai’s. He then took the empty seat on the front row, near Granny and Ruby and Whale.

Regina spoke briefly about love and marriage, about supporting each other. Then the rituals of their home began. Granny rose and handed them each a piece of bread with salt. “Eat this, as a reminder that you are each other’s sustenance in sorrow.” She smiled as they fed each other.

Ruby rose and brought forth a goblet of wine. “Drink this, as a reminder that you are each other’s joy in celebration.” They all watched as each of them sipped from the cup.

Emma and Mary Margaret stepped forward, placing the wreathes on their heads. “Wear these, as a reminder to share the rule of your household.” Mary Margaret squeezed Del’s hand.

David stepped forward, taking one of each of their hands and binding them with a long silk ribbon. “Know that this is a physical reminder of your love that binds you together today and for all time.”

Regina smiled at the couple. “And now, your vows.”

Del smiled at Caius, love shining in her eyes. “When I met you, I was a lonely little girl lost. You accepted me for whom and what I was. You played with me, laughed with me, and grew with me. Fate conspired to separate us, but it could never break the love I had for you in my heart. As long as I have lived and as long as I will live, I have loved and will love you. I will support you and defend you, and stand by you until my last breath. Today, finally, I take you as my husband.”

Cai gazed into her eyes. “When I met you, I was also alone. It was easy to befriend you, because I was astonished someone as amazing as you wanted to befriend me. It was even easier to love you, because your heart fit mine, like two halves of a whole. When fate took you from me, time and again, I would have done anything to get back to you. You were and are my light, and my hope, and home. Across realms and through time, my dream has always been you. My love for you has not, and shall not waiver, and my need for you shall never end. I will support you and defend you, and stand by you until my last breath. Today, finally, I take you as my wife.”

Sniffling could be heard from the audience and from where Mary Margaret stood with Emma. Regina even looked teary eyed. “And now, the rings.”

Henry stepped forward, and handed two simple gold bands to them. “These rings are a reminder, from this day forward, of the promises you made here, before all those gathered with you. Wear them in love and good health.”

Taking her hand, Cai slipped the ring on her left ring finger, then held his still as she did the same.

Regina smiled. “By the power vested in me as Mayor, and before these gathered witnesses, I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

She stepped close to him as his hand came up cupping her cheek softly as his lips met hers. It was a sweet kiss, loving and gentle with just a hint of passion to it. A round of cheers erupted from the audience as they turned and walked up the aisle.

Soon, everyone was enjoying the massive buffet of food (crab and lobster and fish, grilled on the huge grill that Leroy and the other dwarfs had found from somewhere, salads and corn and potatoes), and the music being played by a couple of people who had been troubadours in their old lives.

Henry was on the area construed as a dance floor, dancing with Regina, while Emma and Killian sat off to one side, cuddling. Cai and Del sat at one of the picnic tables, visiting with Mary Margaret and David. The prince and Cai stood a little off, watching the new bride play with baby Neal. “Congratulations,” David said softly. “I know it took a while, but you did indeed get your happy ending.”

“You too,” Cai said, watching the bandit princess he had served for so long smile over at her husband. “What do you think the odds are that the peace and quiet lasts?”

David gave a rueful smile. “Abysmal. But we’ll have moments like these to treasure and get us through. Speaking of, it’s time you danced with your bride.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” the knight said. Walking over to her, he waited until she handed the baby back to the princess, then rose to let him lead her onto the floor. As the lively dance music of the old realms overtook them, they spun in circles, laughing, like they had once upon a time, a long, long time ago.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read it, commented, and left kudos. I appreciate it.
> 
> I don't plan to revisit Del and Cai after this. I imagine they'll fade into the Storybrooke background. Though I will never say never.
> 
> As for everyone else, that will be a tale for another time.


End file.
